


What Monsters have Nightmares About

by thesoulofchaos



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesoulofchaos/pseuds/thesoulofchaos
Summary: Crossover fiction as part of 12daysofchristmas challenge, following directly on from the events of 'In Every Generation...' from the 2016 challenge.





	1. Chapter 1

_ Alicia _

Alicia perched on the windowsill and cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder. It rang for what seemed like an age before someone picked it up.

“Good afternoon, you’ve reached the Hope residence”, it wasn’t Sally, although Alicia was quite certain that the other girl would have answered in just as twee of a manner.

“Hello, is Sally there?”, Alicia fiddled with the edge of the decorative mat on the windowsill, tassels brushed calloused fingertips, then added as an afterthought, “It’s Alicia, from school”, then immediately wished she hadn’t in case Sally had ever shared exactly what she thought of Alicia with her parents.

“Please hold the line and I will get her for you”, and with that Mrs Hope - or at least Alicia assumed that was who it was - left silence on the line whilst Alicia waited. Alicia had never much interacted with Sally’s parents; she had a good idea where Sally had got her oddness from though. 

Alicia became quite distracted by rearranging the mat so that it was lined up just so, carefully not to dislodge the ornaments and pots on top of it in her endeavour. So when she heard, “What do you want?”, through the phone she practically jumped off the windowsill.

“Well hello to you too”, Alicia recovered quickly, “My - a few days away from school and you forget all your manners”.

“Why are you calling me Alicia?”, Sally sounded exasperated and it had only taken two sentences, Alicia smirked to herself and leant back against the windowsill again.

“Maybe I missed you? You’re a bit grumpy, is it nearly your other time of the month? The furry one I mean”, Alicia teased, knowing full well that Sally’s lycan transformation had mercifully not fallen during the half-term hols.

There was a cold silence on the the end of the line and Alicia waited for a beat, then decided she had gone too far with her teasing and brought the phone call back to purpose, “Have you had a visit from Rupert?”

The was the sound of movement through the phone line and Alicia knew Sally would have gone to check that her parents were nowhere near. She sighed to the empty line. The other young woman took paranoia to a new extreme sometimes but Alicia couldn’t completely fault her for it given all that had happened in the previous term. More movement and then Sally’s voice returned,

“He turned up two days ago”, Sally always sounded as though she was picking her words carefully but there was something tenser than usual cutting across her voice, “He didn’t speak to me though, just lurked around outside my house for a few hours”.

Alicia glanced out the window to check her mother was still outside, “He tried the lurking thing with me too but I just snuck up on him instead. He was as cryptic as always. Has he been out to Darrell yet?”. Of the three of them, Darrell lived furthest from Malory Towers. 

“I don't know”. Something about Sally’s voice made Alicia want to dig in a little deeper, so when it became apparent that Sally wasn’t expanding on her statement she said, 

“I called her the other day”, Alicia said, “I'm worried about her”. It was the truth, her friend had answered most of Alicia’s questions with single word answers before saying she had to go and help her parents, hanging up in a most abrupt manner.

“I am too”, Sally said carefully, “I’m staying over for the last few days of the hols and coming back to school with her on the train”.

“She spoken to you about any of it yet?”, and whilst Alicia meant the ‘it’ where Darrell was kidnapped and tortured by vampires on behalf of an ancient demon, she winced to herself as she thought of all the other ‘its’ that must surely be piling up on her friend by now. One friend summoned as a Slayer. Another turned into a werewolf. Herself now a target for the supernatural. Alicia’s wander thoughts were dragged back by Sally’s response,

“Nothing”.

Alicia frowned and ran her fingers over the patterns on the various pots on the windowsill, did their mother  _ really _ keep all their awful pottery attempts? Still - they all had plants in and weren’t leaking so perhaps they weren’t truly awful. 

She cleared her throat, “Nothing at all?”

“That’s what I said. She’s…”, and there was a poignant gap as Sally no doubt carefully gathered up her words, “She’s shut me out too”. Even though it wasn’t about her, something about the statement hit Alicia hard in the stomach. She tried not to think too hard about how Sally must feel.

“But you’re going to hers still? She hasn’t cancelled that right?”, Alicia asked, she turned the pot her brother had made around, picked it up to get a closer look.

“I imagine that would draw too much attention from her parents”, Sally’s voice had grown quieter, “I think they’ve been asking questions”.

“They don’t suspect - ”

“No - Marie’s story passed muster”, Sally cut off her query.

“I always used to think the saying was passed mustard, never did make much sense”, Alicia mused.

“Alicia...”

“Fine”, Alicia fumbled the plant pot and juggled it desperately with one hand, spilled dirt on the carpet but finally set it down on the windowsill, “Call me? Tell me how she’s getting on? Or tell her to call me?”.

“I’ll see what I can do. Goodbye Alicia”. Alicia didn’t have time to respond before Sally hung up. She looked at the lopsided little flower in her brother’s plant pot and quickly patted the soil back down, straighten it up.

She set the phone back in the cradle and went outside to find her mother, something about her conversation had left her unsettled and she shoved her hands into her pockets as she walked up to where her mother was working in the garden.

“Anything I can help with?”, she asked and she smiled as her mother handed her a trowel.

“Thought you’d never ask”, her mother replied.

  
  


_ Sally _

Sally couldn’t say what had woken her - she often wasn’t sure these days with her increased sensitivity - but as she returned from downstairs with a glass of water, the emotions that flashed from the direction of Darrell’s room made her miss a step and stumble. 

She struggled to catch her breath, so violent and sudden was the onslaught of feelings that Sally couldn’t separate one from the other. Everytime she thought she had pinned down one - anger, terror, despair - it slipped from her and evolved into something else.

With as much restraint as she could manage, she climbed the stairs, padded across the landing and pushed open the door to Darrell’s bedroom. She watched as Darrell paced in the dark, unaffected by Sally’s interruption.

“Darrell?”, Sally announced her presence with a voice barely more than a whisper but it made Darrell jump all the same. Darrell looked for all the world like she might run away, although Sally wasn’t sure where Darrell would run to. Given the look in Darrell’s eyes, Sally couldn’t dismiss the possibility of her jumping out of the window. Sally then remembered that while she, with her newly developed supernatural strengths, could see in the dark, Darrell could not.  


Sally set her glass down on the bedside table and turned on the bedside lamp. A soft glow spread across the room and Darrell flinched at the light. Sally sat down on the bed and waited in pained silence for Darrell to decide what to do. Eventually, Darrell sat on the end of the bed. 

“Nightmares?”, Sally asked and Darrell nodded as she clenched at the sleeves of her pajamas top, closing the ends. Sally’s eyes flickered over Darrell whilst her friend was distracted.

“You’re bleeding”, she shifted closer and tried to ignore the way that Darrell recoiled at the movement. Darrell let her carefully push up her pajama sleeve and Sally barely kept herself from reacting when she saw the deep scratches in Darrell’s arms.

“I don’t remember doing it”, Darrell finally spoke and Sally just nodded.

“I will be back in a minute, okay?”, and Sally didn’t move until Darrell nodded again. Sally crept back to her room to retrieve the first aid bundle that Marie had insisted they all take. Darrell was still sat in the same place when she returned. Sally tried not to think too hard about how much effort it must have taken for Darrell to have done the damage to her arms that she had. She pulled the same salve out that Marie and Matron had used after Darrell’s attack.

“Do you know that doesn’t help with the pain?”, Darrell asked, and Sally contained the shudder at how empty Darrell’s voice sounded, “It covers up the injury, stops the bleeding. Pain is all still there”.

Sally wordlessly applied the salve and then wrapped a bandage around Darrell’s arm; even before all of this Sally had never been able to put into words exactly what she wanted to say and now words didn’t seem anywhere near good enough.

“It’s never going to stop, is it?”, and this time Darrell looked at Sally as she spoke, though Sally almost wished she hadn’t because the pain in Darrell’s voice and eyes was almost enough to make her cry, “I thought coming home would...but...it’s not getting better”. Darrell’s voice broke at the end as her own tears finally won out and Sally pushed the first aid bag to the floor as she gathered Darrell into her arms and let her cry.

 

_ Rupert _

“Ah yes, well…”, Rupert looked up at the women who had just pulled him down from the fence he was climbing over, “There’s a rather good explanation…”

“Harriet is everything...Rupert?”, and he had never been so relieved to see Marie Potts in all his life.

“You know him?”, the woman glanced away from him and he took the opportunity to scramble to his feet and brush himself down, “Would he care to explain why he was sneaking around our home?”

“Rupert is my…”, and Marie rolled her eyes and shook her head, “Do you know what, this is a long discussion best done inside. He’s fine Harriet. Come, let’s head in”. Rupert tried his best to smile charmingly as Harriet looked back at him but all that prompted was a quite contemptuous raised eyebrow. He followed behind the two women and found himself at the very house he had been looking for when Harriet had got the jump on him. 

He took his shoes off without prompting and set them just inside the porch and hung his coat on the empty hanger away from all the other coats - it was filthy from trekking through the countryside.

“Is he the one from the Watcher’s Council?”, he heard Harriet ask as he stepped inside the house. He didn’t hear Marie’s reply but soon after Harriet popped her head out of one of the doors,

“Well, are you coming?”

Rupert took a seat at the dinner table, cringed as he realised he must have arrived and interrupted them just before eating.

“Sorry about all this”, he mumbled.

“Don’t worry, Marie always cooks with left-overs in mind”, Harriet replied and Rupert was relieved to hear that the animosity had at least gone from her voice.

“Did you manage to catch up with all three girls?”, Marie asked as she began making cups of tea and she must have sensed Rupert’s hesitant glance at Harriet because she continued, “Don’t be coy in front of Harriet”.

“We met over a vampire you see”, Harriet explained, a lazy smile gracing her face in response to Rupert’s shock, “Or rather Marie stopped one making me it’s dinner”.

“I did”, Rupert decided to just answer Marie rather than sidetrack onto Harriet’s comment and thanked Marie as she pushed his tea across the table to him, “Alicia’s quite a bit quieter and more serious than she was before”, he took a sip of his tea and then continued, “I’m a bit concerned about Sally just because she’s behaving so normally - I would have expected some sort of response given what she’s been through”.

“Leave Sally to me, she keeps her emotions buried far deeper than either of the others”, Marie said.

“Darrell…”, Rupert trailed off and shook his head, “She needs help Marie, she looked terrible and from what I overheard her parents saying”, he had the decency to blush as Harriet raised an eyebrow, “they’re deeply concerned about how unlike herself she is behaving”. The Rivers - young Felicity included - had been given a story of illness and injury to explain Darrell’s exhaustion and pain. Marie and Matron had spent a long time going over it; as a doctor, Mr Rivers would see through a story that didn’t quite add up.

“Mr Rivers has already taken her to a hospital”, Marie said, though she didn’t offer how she knew this, “thankfully we had just enough time to get someone from the watcher’s council in to corroborate our cover story”, a strange expression flickered across Marie’s face and she asked, “do you think they’ll keep her home from school?”

Rupert leant back in his chair and turned the cup around on it’s coaster with his fingertips as he thought back over the snippets of conversation he had managed to listen in on at the Rivers’ household.

“I wouldn’t rule it out”, he said eventually, “would that not be the best thing for her? To be away from all of  _ this _ ?”

“Maybe”, and Marie looked more uncertain than Rupert had ever seen, “I’m concerned about the ongoing impact of her torture, and whether the Conduit did anything we don’t know about”. Rupert grimaced, it was so easy to forget sometimes that it wasn’t just a beating that Darrell Rivers was recovering from - as awful as that alone would have been. After being dragged unceremoniously into the supernatural world by virtue of just being friends with Alicia and Sally, Darrell had found herself at the mercy of a particularly cruel and sadistic demon.

“We’re not going to solve this tonight at any rate”, Marie sighed, “let me serve dinner and then we can talk some more. The spare room is all set up”. 

“Rather thought you’d be turfing me out after I delivered my report”, Rupert smirked, trying to break the tension in the room and he saw Harriet raise an eyebrow as though to suggest he better not rule that option out just yet.

“Harriet gets up at five so don’t expect a lie in”, Marie replied as she started to serve up dinner, “but you’re welcome to stay until term restarts, unless you have somewhere else you need to be?”

Rupert thought for a moment about making some dry comment about the only places he had ever called home had rejected him and failed him time and again but decided against the self-pity, instead just offering a quiet, “Thank you”, as response.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Rupert _

“Harriet mentioned you had stepped out here earlier”, Marie held out a cup of tea as she spoke, and once Rupert accepted it shook the rain drops off the back of her hand and took a sip from her own cup.

“Still feels like I’m intruding, regardless of how polite you both are about it”, Rupert replied and for a few moments they both stood silently, sipping on their respective drinks and watching the rain send ripples over the lake.

“I didn’t take you for someone that fished”, Rupert broke the silence eventually and gestured with his cup towards the fishing equipment in the corner of the wooden shelter they were under.

“Oh, I don’t”, Marie smiled, “I’m awful at fishing, they’re Harriet’s”.

“Harriet owns the land?”, Rupert asked, and at Marie’s quizzical look he added, “you don’t seem like the land-owning type either”.

“And Harriet does?”, Marie asked.

“No, but her surname is attached to quarter of the business property this end of the country”, Rupert grinned, “How did you end up involved with a Rutherford?”

“Like she said, we met over a vampire”, Marie replied and then she cleared her throat, “the Watcher Council called…”

“About me I should think with your tone like that”, Rupert finished his tea but kept the cup cradled in his hands for the heat from the ceramic.  


“They wanted me to talk you into taking up your duties full-time again”, Marie replied and Rupert was never more grateful for her honesty.

“What did you say?”

“Told them that I wasn’t badgering you into anything you weren’t ready for”, Marie replied, “and I won’t - just thought it right to tell you”.

“You know everything right?”, Rupert asked.

“I am almighty and all-knowledgeable”, Marie responded dryly and then cracked a smile as Rupert rolled his eyes, “about what?”

“About my less than illustrious career as a Watcher so far”, Rupert leant against the wall behind him.

“I believe I know most of it”, Marie confirmed.

“Do you know my father?”, Rupert glanced over at Marie to watch as she formed her answer. She took her time taking another drink and then nodded,

“I know _of_ him more than I know him, we have exchanged very few words directly”.

“Don’t suppose you would give me your opinion?”, Rupert asked.

“My opinion doesn’t really matter”, Marie replied, “this isn’t about that so why don’t you just ask me whatever it is you want to ask”.

Rupert looked away and felt himself scowl as he put together his questions, “Was I wrong to react the way I did to what he did?”

“No”, Marie’s answer was instant, “did you make mistakes? Yes. I would be more surprised if you hadn’t given the nature of teenagers. Your father also made a mistake when he sent you all against that Lorophage demon. The difference is you are learning from your mistake”.

“I don’t think he thinks he made a mistake”, Rupert muttered and then he switched topics, “what do you want to do about the three girls then?”

“I'm worried about them all in different ways but I don't know there's much we can do until they're back at school”, Marie said. 

“Any luck finding out if the demon is gone for good this time?”, Rupert asked and he felt a heaviness in his stomach as Marie shook her head.

“I wish there were better news to be told”, Marie sounded apologetic and Rupert waved away the tone more than the words.

“Can’t be helped I suppose, in our line of work”, Rupert stood up and walked towards the front of the shelter where he could see fish peeping up at the surface of the water, "Supposedly it can rain fish - did you ever hear about that?"  


"There's been a few recorded incidents, Singapore, Nepal, Louisiana...", Marie replied and Rupert smiled to himself, of course Marie had heard.

"If all of this, being a Watcher I mean, had never happened I would probably be looking for a scientific explanation like tornados", Rupert said, "I find myself stopping more and more and thinking about how life would have been different if I had never been exposed to any of this. I wonder if Alicia and the others will be thinking the same thing in five years time".

He was surprised when Marie, not typically a tactile person, squeezed his shoulder as she said, "How about we just focus on making sure they see five years time for now? The rest we can work on along the way".

 

*

 

_ Sally _

Sally didn’t glance up as the smaller body set down beside her on the bench but she did greet her friend’s younger sister, “Come to say goodbye to the fish? Finished with the chickens already?”

Felicity Rivers nudged her with her elbow, bolder now that she had known Sally for a few years, “I don’t say goodbye to the fish individually, besides I don’t say goodbye until tomorrow”

“So tomorrow they’ll just get a collective goodbye then?”, Sally asked and as Felicity grumbled something under her breath which was undoubtedly too cheeky for Sally to ask to be repeated, it was almost like things were back to normal.

“What really happened to Darrell?”, Felicity asked and it felt like the air grew heavier around them, “I know there’s more to it than I’m being told”.

Sally tried to remember what exactly Marie had told the Rivers - some tale of Darrell getting injured playing sports and then coming down ill while she struggled to recover from her injury. Given Darrell’s tendency towards good health, Sally found it difficult to believe that anyone had believed it. Though one look at Darrell would back-up the idea of her being unwell.

“That depends on what you’ve been told”, Sally replied.

“Just that she’s not well”, Felicity shrugged, “that she got hurt playing sports and now she’s not very well, but I  _ know _ it’s more than that”.

Sally watched the fish nip back and forth in the fish pond as she wondered what she should tell Felicity.

“That one’s Darrell’s”, Felicity said, pointing to a fish with dark splotches along its back, “When I was little and I wasn’t well, we all got fish. Mine is the big one over there”.

Considering how open Darrell was about most things in her life, Sally hadn’t heard all that much about Darrell’s life before Malory Towers, especially about Felicity’s illness. From the little she could gather, Sally understood that Felicity had been ill a lot as a child and that her immune system was compromised. Darrell didn’t like to talk about it, which always made Sally wonder if it had been something rather more serious.

“She got into trouble a bit at school, before Malory Towers I mean”, Felicity kept talking as she scooped a handful of fish food from the bowl at her feet and scattered it into the pond, “she kept getting into fights over silly things, but we all knew it was because she was worried about me and not sure how to cope”. That much Sally could believe.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it”, Sally said, "not even with me".  


“I know”, Felicity shrugged, “She’ll talk about it with me sometimes, if I need to talk about it but even then she gets a little upset about it all”, Felicity shifted off the bench and dipped her hand into the pond with food cupped in the palm of her hand so that the fish all rushed over and ate from her hand.

“I think I understand what she felt like now”, Felicity said as she watched the fish, “seeing Darrell like this, it’s terrifying, and I know that everyone is protecting me from the truth and I’m scared something really bad is going to happen”. Sally, for one wild moment, wanted to tell Felicity the truth and pull back the curtain to the supernatural. But as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it.

“Darrell was…”, Sally hesitated, “she was hurt a lot worse than people are letting on and she’s struggling to recover from it”, and she felt guilty for only offering such a small piece of information.

“Did she get ill or is it all just the injury?”, Felicity asked, moving back onto the bench. Sally couldn’t look at Felicity as she lied to her,

“She got ill, that part’s true”, and Sally remembered the blank stare as Darrell woke up night after night, drenched in sweat and shaking with fear, “I don’t know all the details but her temperature got really high, she was feverish, she wasn't sleeping”.

“Is she going to be okay?”, Felicity asked and Sally barely managed to swallow the lump of emotion in her throat.

“I hope so”


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

  _Sally_

* * *

“You don’t call, you don’t write… I’m hurt”, Alicia’s voice shook Sally from her exhaustion fuelled trance and she blinked away the tiredness as she look up at where the other girl was leaning over the back of the seat. Sally shielded her eyes from the late morning sunlight and quickly glanced down the carriage towards where Darrell had gone.

“I would ask if you had good hols but I rather think we both know it would be a pointless pleasantry”, Alicia said, “How is she?” and she nodded towards the seat currently occupied by Darrell’s bag.

“Quiet”, Sally replied, “Distant”.

“I suppose that’s to be expected?”, Alicia asked as she leant her chin on her hands, folded on the top of the seat.

“It’s actually an improvement…”, and Sally let the statement hang unfinished, she didn’t much want to discuss Darrell’s self-harm on the train, “Sorry I didn’t call”, and she felt awkward offering an apology to Alicia but the other girl _had_ asked her to update her on Darrell and Sally didn’t like to fail on an expectation. As predicted, Alicia waved off her apology.

“I didn’t really expect you to call, I figured she was as alright as she was going to be since you were there”, and something about the way Alicia delivered the statement made Sally want to pull it apart for hidden meaning but then Alicia changed topics, “How many days until the full moon?”

Sally felt her back go stiff and she looked around at the other girls, all deeply involved in their own conversations, then finally answered “Four days time”.

Alicia didn’t say anything else so Sally focused her attention instead on looking out the window and hoped that Darrell would be back soon.

She started to her feet as the train began to slowly pull out of the station.

“You don’t think she…”, Alicia must have sensed the thought running through Sally’s head.

“I don’t know Alicia”, and Sally couldn’t keep the frustration from her voice, “she said she was off to speak to Felicity”.

“Felicity’s in the carriage behind us, I didn’t see Darrell as I came through”, Alicia said and Sally immediately felt foolish for not realising that Darrell had lied to her, her friend had gone the opposite direction to Felicity’s carriage.

Sally shimmied out of the seats and made her way down the carriage, doing her best to respond politely to the few people who greeted her. Thankfully, the other girls, even her own form, rarely engaged Sally in conversation when she was alone. Darrell was the one who got stopped, who people wanted to speak to and Sally got included by virtue of being Darrell’s friend.

Sally moved through the second carriage as well, focusing on Darrell’s trace. She could sense Alicia following quite a distance behind her, no doubt doing her best to act naturally.

“Darrell?”, Sally came to a halt in the luggage compartment between two of the carriages when she saw her friend sat, knees tucked in against her chest, on the floor. There was no response and Sally slowly lowered her own body to a crouch as she tried to catch Darrell’s eye. Her friend stared, unblinking, at something Sally couldn’t see and there was a turmoil in her eyes that made Sally uneasy.

“Darrell?”, Sally gently touched Darrell’s elbow and jumped back as her friend recoiled with a start. There was a moment, just a moment, where Sally swore Darrell looked at her as though she had no idea who she was, and then her friend was back.

“Sally...I…”, and Darrell rubbed the back of her neck as she struggled with whatever it was she wanted to say, “I just needed…”. Sally reached for Darrell’s hand again, paused just before touching it and felt a swell of relief as Darrell closed the distance and held her hand.

“I know”, Sally said, even though she didn’t know - couldn’t know - what was going through Darrell’s head, “Do you think we can go back to the seats now?”. She was grateful when Darrell just nodded and let Sally help her up.

 

* * *

_Alicia_

* * *

 

There was something reassuring about falling back into the routine of patrolling the grounds around Malory Towers. It took her mind off the worries that brushed at the edge of every thought she seemed to have.

“I can't believe no-one remembers what happened down there”, Sally said as they nearer the town ravaged by the Conduit the previous term. Alicia knew Sally would rather be at the school keeping an eye on Darrell but Marie had requested she accompany Alicia and Sally had - reluctantly - agreed. Alicia made a mental note to keep up a steady pace on this patrol; she had no intentions of keeping Sally out longer than they needed to be.

“People believe what they need to I suppose”, Alicia shrugged as she kept to the forest edge for cover, “if you weren't already involved would you believe your own eyes if you saw monsters?”

“I don't know, I imagine not”, Sally stopped abruptly and Alicia watched as she looked around slowly, a gentle amber glow to her eyes that still made Alicia feel uneasy.

“Just like having your own torches”, Alicia joked as she looked away, “I take it you can turn them on and off on command? Might be a bit of a problem if we go back and the others see you like that”

“There's vampires just beyond that wall”, Sally started to lead the way towards the vampires, “and none of the others will wake up when we go back”.

“Even Darrell?”, Alicia didn't much like the idea of her friend being put under a spell like the rest of her classmates.

“Not the memory one, it's a sleeping one”, Sally replied, “I wasn't all too keen on the suggestion until Rupert pointed out that Darrell looked like she hadn't slept for days”

“She checks under her pillow and sheets, you noticed that?”, Alicia asked and Sally just nodded.

“She checks a lot of things now”, Sally replied and Alicia decided to leave the cryptic comment hanging between them as they approached the vampires in silence. She tapped Sally on the arm as they got closer, held up one, then two fingers and raised her eyebrow. Sally held up four fingers in response and Alicia nodded, braced herself to jump over the wall.

There was a moment of weightlessness whenever Alicia jumped over things now, she could only presume it was part of her Slayer abilities. Whatever it was, she felt free for just a moment, before the rush of gravity brought her back.

She slammed her knee into the back of the vampire beneath her and sent him face first into the dirt with a sickening crunch - it sounded like his teeth had shattered on impact. Sally landed beside her and threw the nearest vampire into the wall, dazing it.

“Not bad”, Alicia said as she kicked up a branch at her feet and used it to impale the vampire she had floored, “Been practising?”

Sally, unsurprisingly, didn’t offer a response and focused her attention on the two vampires still standing. The less cautious of the two lunged forward and Sally ducked under his wayward flail and took his legs out from beneath him with a single sweep of one of her legs. Alicia managed not to wince as the other girl stomped on the vampire’s head. She refocused her own attention on the final vampire, rightfully cautious having lost three of her companions in a few seconds. Alicia took her moment when the vampire was distracted and a well-placed punch smashed the vampire’s nose.

“Do you lot get blood lust from your own blood?”, Alicia asked as the vampire snarled at her, blood already congealed across her nose and top lip. Blood lust or not, the injury had riled up the vampire and as she ran at Alicia, Alicia skipped to the side and pulled a stake out of her jacket. She slammed it into the vampire’s chest and everything was still for a second, then the now-familiar sound of vampire becoming dust.

“Where’s the other…”, Alicia trailed off as she watched Sally pull up the final vampire by the back of his shirt and slam a stake into his chest, “You really are becoming a natural at this”.

“Can we keep going please?”, and Alicia just nodded. The rest of their patrol was mercifully uneventful and they were soon back on Malory Towers grounds.

“Door's been shut”, Alicia said, nodding towards the back door they usually used to get in and out of the building.

“Window isn't”, Sally replied. They had originally planned to leave the window to their dorm room open as a backup but decided that if for some reason Darrell _were_ to wake up, it would only serve to worsen her trauma if she found the same window open that she had been taken out of by the Conduit. So they had eventually agreed on one of the study windows on the second floor, after which they only needed to creep up two flights of stairs to their dorms.

They kept to the shadows as they maneuvered round to the wall nearest the window and Sally scaled the nearest tree quicker than Alicia could blink. She still sometimes found it difficult to reconcile that the girl she had spent the last four years making fun of for being so dull and unassuming was now able to go from ground to a bough sixteen feet high in seconds and drive solid wood through a body without so much as a blink. Alicia followed Sally’s lead and waited near the trunk as Sally crept out to the end of one of the branches, then leapt onto the top of the walkway between the towers.

As Alicia braced herself to jump she saw a flicker of a torch and it distracted her just enough for her to lose her footing. She grabbed the edge of the stonework with her fingertips and slammed her feet against the stone to stop herself bouncing back, and it made more than enough noise to attract attention.

“Who is out of their dorm?”, Miss Peters voice called out and Alicia cursed herself silently.

A hand wrapped around her wrist and she was pulled up on top of the walkway like a rag doll where she flattened herself to the stone, hoping that the decorative stonework atop the walkway would be enough to hide them. Sally wasn’t looking at her, which was little comfort considering the other girl could no doubt sense her embarrassment now. Instead the other girl seemed to be tracking the movement of the teacher through scent alone, her eyes moving with an unseen target. The torch flickered over head and Alicia held her breath, as though that would do her any good.

“Come on, it was likely just an animal”, another voice - one of the mistresses from West Tower - said and Alicia finally felt like she could breathe as their footsteps carried on their way. Sally jumped into a crouch in a single smooth motion and continued to watch the teachers’ departure for a moment longer before she nodded towards the window.

Alicia jumped up and climbed in first, leaning out to offer her hand to Sally, a gesture the other girl hardly needed but was, to Alicia’s relief, courteous enough to accept.

Alicia quickly reset the charm on the outside of the window, just to be sure, and they crept back up to the dorms. The others were still fast asleep, kept under no doubt by the power of whatever magic Marie and Rupert had cast. It was only a pity they didn’t have the strength to cast it over the whole school but Marie had made it clear that this was a short-term solution as humans tended to response poorly to long-term magic use.

Alicia paused at the foot of Darrell’s bed, the other girl was clearly troubled even with the magical assistance as her hands gripped the fabric of her sheets so tightly it looked as though she would tear the sheets at any moment. She felt Sally watching her and, after a moment more, she went over to her own bed.

 

* * *

_Marie_

* * *

 

Marie had never been one to sleep in but ever since taking on full Watcher responsibilities - and then some with the addition of Rupert - she found herself unable to sleep beyond half four in the morning.

Which, she reasoned, explained why she was in her office sorting through books at quarter past five. On the way, she had allowed herself a brief glance in the North Tower fifth form, more to ease her own concerns than anything else.

She moved the books on the Conduit from her holdall back into the chest, then locked the chest and covered it back over with the throw. She paused at the envelope sat beneath one of her other books - the one she had used to cast the sleeping spell on the fifth form dorm - and carefully picked it up.

As she opened it, she wondered how she had missed it yesterday, recalling that she had been distracted by speaking to Alicia who had just appeared out of nowhere shortly after the train girls had arrived. As Marie opened the letter, she made a mental note to revisit the topic of discretion with her charge.

Marie frowned as she read through the letter, a dull ache in her chest as she moved on to the second page and read that as well. It was a letter from the Watcher’s Council detailing sightings of vampires more powerful than usual throughout the Cornish countryside. Vampires who could…

A knock at the door interrupted her and she quickly tucked the letter inside one of the books and the book in her top drawer. She planted what she hoped was a neutral expression on her face and opened her door.

“Whatever are you doing up so early?”, it was Elizabeth, the school Matron, on the other side of the door, “Saw your light on and thought someone might be in here that shouldn’t be, I’m sure I heard one of the girls up wandering earlier. It wasn’t one of yours on some sort of patrol was it?”

“Oh...no. Just couldn’t sleep, and last I checked all mine were asleep where they should be”, Marie stepped aside but Elizabeth shook her head with a smile.

“Just passing by, got my own chores to be getting on with”, Elizabeth hesitated at the door, “Darrell Rivers didn’t stop by yesterday, I was expecting her…”

“I’ll bring her down later”, Marie promised and returned to the desk to continue reading the book. She sat down and started to flick through the pages to double check there was nothing more she needed from the book, and once that was done she pulled the letter out. As she did a flicker of movement caught her eye and she glanced up.

While she was certain she didn’t quite jump at the sudden appearance of Darrell in her office, she did knock the book off the edge of the table. Darrell’s hand shot out and caught it before it hit the floor and the girl turned it around to inspect it before she held it out for Marie to take back.

“Sorry”, and the apology sounded genuine, “I did knock but I don’t think you heard me”. Marie wasn’t sure if that was true, especially given her usual sensitivity to any movement around her but then again she certainly hadn’t heard the girl enter. So she just smiled and accepted the book.

“You’re up very early”, Marie observed and Darrell immediately put her hands into her blazer pockets and dropped her gaze.

“I don’t sleep well at the moment”, she conceded and Marie wanted to ask if she had had a better night’s sleep her first night back at Malory Towers, but eventually decided against it. Whilst Darrell at times suffered from a reputation amongst her peers of being a little naive and unobservant, Marie felt that was more to do with an unfair comparison with Sally Hope who had been uncomfortably perceptive at times, even before her lycan transformation. If she were to ask questions about Darrell’s sleep, she had no doubt that Darrell would suspect magical interference.

“Matron asked that we go down to her later, have you checked over”, Marie said instead and Darrell nodded, looking past Marie and out of the window. There was a familiar distance in her eyes that took Marie back to her own teenage years and to the young men who had returned from fighting overseas. Then, after a moment, it was gone and Darrell was looking at her again.

“When do you want me to go down?”, Darrell asked.

“Between third period and lunch?”, Marie asked and at Darrell’s nod continued, “Shall we say we will meet down there to avoid drawing extra attention?”

“That’s fine, do you think Matron can do anything for the pain?”, Darrell asked and now that Marie looked closer she saw that there were definite dark circles beneath Darrell’s eyes and she was carrying herself in a guarded way even just shifting from foot to foot.

“We can certainly ask”, Marie promised, mentally chiding herself for sending the girl home for the half-term with little stronger than aspirin.

“Thank you”, and with that Darrell pulled a small book out of her blazer pocket and held it out to Marie. Marie watched her for a moment and then reached out to accept the offered book. She thought about chastising the girl for taking one of the supernatural books out of the cottage but decided against it given recent events and just nodded.

It wasn’t until the door shut behind the girl that Marie wondered whether all that was _really_ what Darrell had come in for.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

_Alicia_

* * *

 

“We’re not going to finish before the bell goes”, Belinda said as Alicia asked for another card and suppressed her grimace. She glanced around the picnic table and reassured herself that she had kept her face neutral.

“We’ll hide the jar and finish up later”, Alicia said, “leave it with me and I’ll put it somewhere safe”.

“Better off leaving it and the cards with someone who isn’t invested in the game, never know if you’ll stack the cards in your favour for the next round”, Irene teased and Alicia rolled her eyes.

“So distrusting”, Alicia watched as Irene folded, “besides, you don’t have me convinced yet that you aren’t counting cards”. Irene just grinned back at her.

“I fold too”, Belinda said and she pushed her cards to the centre of the table just as the bell went, “Darrell? Can you keep all this somewhere safe?”.

When the girl in question didn’t respond, Alicia glanced over at Darrell who was staring intently at the wood patterns on the table, drawing repetitive patterns with her fingers tips in time with what looked like silent words moving against her lips.

“I’ll take them”, Sally cut through the silence and, as another girl who hadn’t been actively involved in the game that was deemed acceptable and the jar and cards were quickly scurried away into a bag and handed over.

Sally nudged Darrell who looked up sharply, “Yes?”

“Matron”, was all Sally said and Alicia had to admit it was a jolly good way to distract from and explain Darrell’s peculiar behaviour, reminding all around them with a single word that their friend was currently taking a batch of rather strong painkillers. As Darrell and Sally headed off towards Matron’s, the rest made their way to Maths.

“Darrell must be so frustrated, how much longer is she not to do sports?”, Belinda asked.

“Until Matron says”, Alicia shrugged. She didn’t like discussing it if she could avoid it. There was something decidedly creepy about her form having a collective false memory of Darrell being badly injured during a game of Lacrosse. She had no idea if the Sports Mistress, Miss Maxwell, had also been subject to a concoction involving Lethe’s Bramble under her pillow or whether she was part of Marie’s secret group here at Malory Towers. Either way, it gave Alicia pause to doubt her own memories, her own thoughts. At times she found herself going into deep and unsettling thought trails wondering if she were even the Slayer at all or whether this was some grand hallucination.

She shuddered at the idea.

“I wouldn’t mind getting time off of games”, and Alicia felt herself bristling at Maureen’s words. At least, for once, Gwen had had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

Mercifully for Maureen, they had arrived at class by the time she spoke so Alicia just kept her head down and found her seat. After her frosty seating arrangements last term, Alicia had promptly moved to sit on a table away from Betty as soon as the term had started. Still not on speaking terms, Alicia couldn’t tolerate the silence any longer. It meant she sat on her own most of the time and nearer the front of class than she would usually want but it did allow her an easier means of monitoring Darrell since she sat at the table alongside her.

Darrell and Sally stepped into class a few seconds before Miss James and the lesson started so promptly that Alicia had no chance to speak to them. As soon as they were given freedom to quietly discuss the maths problems - which all too often translated to subdued whispers about anything other than maths - Alicia raced through the first few problems to give herself a head start and turned her attention to the table beside her.

She glanced at Miss James who was patiently re-explaining something to Maureen and Gwendoline and reached out to tap Darrell on the arm. She paused when she realised that Sally was watching Darrell work in utter bewilderment, and she glanced down at Darrell’s book. Where she had assumed Darrell was working away at one of the problems, she saw instead that Darrell had _started_ with maths but quickly descended into lines and lines of scrawls in Latin.

Alicia looked up sharply at Sally and raised her eyebrows in question. Sally shook her head and looked towards Miss James who had finished with Maureen and Gwen and was beginning her slow walk of the room to check on everyone’s progress. Alicia double checked that Miss James had her back to them and then grabbed Darrell’s arm.

The response was immediate.

Her friend jumped to her feet, sending her chair clattering to the floor and turning to Alicia in a defensive stance. There was an awful silence in the room as Darrell seemed to come back from wherever she had been. Alicia felt awful as Darrell slowly looked over the scene at hand and her cheeks tinged with red.

“Darrell? Is everything alright?”, Miss James walked down towards them and Alicia was glad to see Sally surreptitiously rip out the paper filled with Latin and shove it into her blazer pocket.

“I…”, and Darrell finally relaxed the tension in her arms, “I’m sorry, I don’t...I mean I’m alright Miss. Just a little out-of-sorts with the tablets I suppose”. Miss James watched Darrell for longer than was comfortable then nodded. Darrell grabbed her chair from the floor, put it back in place and sunk into it, dropping her face into her hands for a second as Miss James walked past.

“Alright girls, if we could all get on with the work at hand?”, Miss James sat at her desk.

Alicia toyed with the idea of talking to Darrell but changed her mind when she watched Darrell shrug off Sally’s question and return her attention to the first maths problem all over again.

  


* * *

_Sally_

* * *

 

“Please Darrell, just talk to her”, Sally caught Darrell’s hand to stop her walking away and watched the resolve fall from her friend, “If for no other reason than to stop me worrying”. She knew that she was taking advantage of the fact that there were few requests that Darrell would deny her if she thought Sally was concerned.

With what Sally could see was considerable reluctance, Darrell finally agreed, though it hardly felt like a victory of any sort. Alicia had gone on ahead to Marie after the incident in Maths, saying something about needing to make it look like everything was as normal as possible. Sally wasn’t sure how much longer any of them could keep pretending any of this was normal.

Darrell remained subdued on the walk to Marie’s office and the silence meant that Sally could hear Rupert’s voice from the end of the corridor,

“Bloody…...appearing…. ran one….”, and she frowned.

“What’s wrong?”, and Sally smiled at the irony of Darrell asking _her_ that question.

“Rupert found something while he was driving back from town”, Sally said and she pushed open the door of Marie’s office without knocking.

“We couldn’t just pull them both out of class”, Marie was mid-debate with Rupert as they stepped inside.

“Well what use is a bloody Slayer if she has to sit in French while a demon is ravaging the countryside? We could have been sorting this out this morning”, and from the look Alicia gave them both, Sally guessed that this point had been argued already.

“Just”, and Marie glanced at Sally and Darrell before she sighed and shook her head, “Fine - Alicia, go with Rupert and find this demon that he’s talking about, I’ll find some way to explain your absence from the supper hall but for goodness’ sake do try to be discrete about leaving school grounds would you?”

The comment obviously struck a nerve for the pair because they both looked suitably chastised as they left the room.

“Sorry, we have had an unexpected appearance”, Marie closed the book on her desk but Sally caught a glimpse of a creature, large, rounded at the shoulders and dark green in complexion, and decided she was quite alright not accompanying Alicia for this particular jaunt.

“What brings you both down?”, Marie asked, gesturing that they sit on the sofa. As they did, Sally noticed that Darrell was scratching at the inside of her arm again and gently put her hand over Darrell’s to stop her.

“I had an episode in class”, and it was a little jarring to hear Darrell be so blunt about it all.

“How so?”, Marie asked and Darrell shrugged, glanced away from the both for a few moments.

“I think I got lost in my thoughts and got a bit stuck there”, Darrell explained eventually and then she glanced at Sally, “I was writing something”. Sally dutifully took the page from Darrell’s maths book out of her pocket and handed it to Marie. Marie scanned it and Sally focused all of her senses on her, almost wishing she hadn’t when she heard Marie’s heart beat a little quicker and her swallow a lump in her throat.

“I think we have failed you somewhat, in dealing with what happened to you”, and Darrell squirmed in her seat at Marie’s words, “I would like you to speak with someone, a doctor who has far more experience than myself or Matron”.

Darrell looked over at Sally again before agreeing, “If you think it’s what I need”. The bell for supper went and Marie glanced between them for a few seconds.

“Would you be quite alright going on ahead Darrell? I need a few more minutes of Sally’s time”, and Sally wanted to squirm as well as she realised that Marie intended to discuss her arrangements for the full moon.

“I thought it was best she didn’t take on extra burdens that she already has”, Marie said by way of explanation as the door shut behind Darrell, “Tomorrow night, we will resume locking you in the cottage and I hope that we will be able to get by with just the sleeping charm on your dorm. I will lock you in.”

“That’s fine, I shall meet you with plenty of time”, Sally got to her feet, “Was there anything else you needed?”

“You spend an awful lot of time concerned over Darrell’s mental health but you seem to have dedicated little time to looking after yourself since your transformation”, the observation was, as with many of Marie’s observations, uncomfortable in its accuracy.

“She nearly died”, Sally replied.

“And you have changed beyond expectations, beyond belief”, Marie replied, “I have not yet met a person who could take learning about the supernatural in the manner which you have, who has remained so steady about it all. I understand remaining strong for Darrell’s sake…”

“What should I do?”, Sally asked, “Despair? Cry over the changes forced upon me? It will do nothing to change it and now is not the time to sit and feel sorry for myself”. She realised as soon as she finished how short she had been with her teacher and felt her cheeks get warm with embarrassment at her outburst.

“No - I suppose sitting and crying does not suit you, but perhaps when you decide the time is right you should sit and talk”, Marie said, “I will always listen”.

“When the time is right, I will”, Sally said.

 

 

* * *

 

_Rupert_

* * *

 

“You actually ran it over?”, Alicia asked as they turned off the main road and started down the back roads.

“Crushed the damn thing”, Rupert replied, “I had to turn the hosepipe on the tyres in case anyone asked what it was, vile stuff”. He braced himself as they went over a bump in the road a little too swiftly and they were shaken about in the seats.

“How did you know there were more eggs out here then?”, Alicia leant out of the car window and Rupert found himself on the verge of telling her to get her head back inside when he winced at how terribly adult that made him sound.

“It’s what the Viridova demon does, when it’s dying it lays multiple eggs”, Rupert steadied the car around the corner, “each egg contains a replicate of the demon to increase the likelihood of its survival. They’re nasty buggers if there’s one of them, never mind a whole host. One hasn’t been seen for centuries”.

“Well all the creepy crawlies just seem to be coming out for my summoning as the Slayer don’t they”, Alicia grumbled and Rupert frowned.

“You haven’t been reading those books we gave you have you?”, Rupert asked.

“Hold that thought, another egg”, Alicia pointed and Rupert pulled the car over so Alicia could jump out, “there’s two more up on that hillside”. Rupert stepped out and grabbed the cricket bat from the back of the car and made short work of the two eggs on the hill and buried them beneath foliage.

“They’re quite recently laid, we must be getting close”, he said as he got back in the car. Alicia swung back into the passenger’s seat and he started driving again.

“No - I didn’t”, Alicia said, “honestly I think Darrell’s read more about the life of a Slayer than me, I prefer doing rather than reading about”.

“There’s some things you just need to learn from books”, Rupert replied and he could practically hear the eye roll from the young woman beside him.

“Oh please, you hardly seem like the studious type”, Alicia shot back, “Is that our demon?”, and she pointed towards a lumbering figure making it’s way up the hill.

“Indeed”, Rupert replied and he accelerated to close the distance, putting one of the front wheels of the car over another egg on the way. Their conversation flitted away and Alicia was out of the car less than a second after it stopped. He raced after her, swinging the cricket bat to smash the last of the eggs he could see and ducked to avoid the outstretched arm of the Viridova demon.

It was much bigger than the books suggested, towering at nearly twice Rupert’s height. The very fact that there wasn’t a police search party out looking for the damn thing was nothing short of a miracle.

“Knee”, he heard Alicia shout and he darted under another arm swing and smashed the cricket bat into the right knee of the demon. It stumbled but didn’t go down and he nearly slipped himself as he leapt backwards out of reach of its arms.

“Bat?”, Alicia called and he flung the cricket bat to her, behind the demon’s back, and then ran around the front of the demon to draw its attention. The sound when Alicia slammed the bat into the demon’s other knee was sickening, and this time the demon did fall onto one knee.

Alicia threw the bat back to him and ran in to kick the demon in the side of it’s head. Rupert winced as the demon recovered quickly from the blow and wrapped its fingers around Alicia’s leg and flung her into the nearest tree. An equally sickening noise announced that Alicia’s shoulder had almost certainly dislocated.

With the demon’s distraction on his side, Rupert closed the distance and brought the bat down hard on the back of the demon’s head, dazing it. It gave Alicia enough time to move in closer and, with her one good arm, she drove her knife through the demon’s temple. Green blood waterfalled from the demon’s wound and Rupert stepped back to avoid being drenched in it as the demon tried to stagger to its feet before succumbing to the wound.

There was a few moments of silence.

“Demons don’t disintegrate like vampires do they?”, Alicia asked.

“No, they do not”, Rupert confirmed as he walked back towards the car and opened the boot to pull out two shovels.

“This doesn’t seem like part of the Slayer routine”, Alicia grumbled as she leant back against the nearest tree and cradled her arm, “Could you at least help me put this back in first? Rather concerned it might heal wonky otherwise”.

Rupert chastised himself for forgetting her injury so quickly and walked over to her, “It’s easier if you lie down…”, and at Alicia’s look her quickly moved on, directing her where to put her arms so that he could help her relocate the shoulder.

“Good as new”, Alicia said once the shoulder popped back in, though the paleness of her complexion told a different story.

“Sit down, I’ll do the digging”, Rupert said and was surprised when the young Slayer didn’t protest.

“We haven’t been able to properly trace who has the potential to be summoned as a slayer”, Rupert explained as he dug, “but we have seen patterns where Slayers are chosen based on the amount of demonic activity in the area. Then, once the Slayer is called, supernatural beings are inexplicably drawn to her”.

“Seems counterintuitive to their survival”, Alicia commented, “Slayers…”, and for the first time Rupert heard uncertainty from her, “they’re only chosen once the previous Slayer dies, aren’t they?”

Rupert dug in silence for a minute and then spoke, “Yes, there’s only one Slayer at any time”.

“Who was she? My predecessor?”, Alicia asked.

“I never met her”, Rupert replied, “her name was Nikki Wood, she lived in New York. I wish…”, he paused for a moment, “I wish I could have met her, by all accounts she was rather incredible”.

“Did she last long?”, Alicia asked and Rupert realised too late that this was where the conversation was going.

“Alicia…”

“What? Two years? Three?”, Alicia walked towards him, “What’s a good run for a Slayer?”

“Seven years”, Rupert felt himself blurt the words out and cursed his utter stupidity for doing so, “Nikki was a Slayer for seven years”. Alicia froze in front of him and Rupert watched as the devastation masked her entire face.

“Alicia, I’m…”

“Seven years...so if I’m really good I’ll make it through University, maybe have a few years after that and then what? Something comes along and gets the better of me and another girl gets summoned to do it all over again?”, Alicia asked and, despite her efforts, her face gave away the depth of her emotions, “maybe I could beat seven years, what do you think? Maybe I’ve got it in me to get to eight years, that’ll be a lark won’t it?”.

“Alicia, I am sorry”, Rupert’s words were waved off as Alicia stepped past him.

“I’ll be waiting in the car”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The timeline fits more with the BtVS universe but has been wiggled for the MT universe (where there are less actual dates given).


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

  _Marie_

* * *

 

“Well, I royally buggered everything up last night”, Rupert dropped onto the sofa and Marie carefully put away the English work she had been marking. In the back of her mind she did worry that one day she would accidentally put a news clipping about a demon sighting or an ancient scroll translation in one of the first formers’ books and cause a furor like no other amongst the students.

“I presume the demon was slayed since you did not come to report otherwise last night so I imagine this must be an interpersonal issue”, Marie said.

“Alicia was asking questions about Slayers and their lifespans, it didn't go well”, Rupert said and he pulled his cigarette packed out of his jacket pocket, “I’m a bloody idiot”.

Marie pushed the ashtray towards the end of the table and Rupert leant out to catch it with one hand while he lit his cigarette with his other hand.

“How do you do it? Avoid saying utterly stupid things to dishearten your Slayers?”, Rupert asked as he settled the ashtray on his lap.

“Practice and experience unfortunately”, Marie replied as she got up to push the window to her office open, “and truthfully, there will always be moments you get it wrong. Especially if you become responsible for a Slayer as hard-headed as Alicia”.

“I could have been more delicate”, Rupert seemed to slump lower into the sofa, “I’ve never seen her upset like that”.

“Alicia doesn’t _do_ delicate”, Marie watched as the girls traipsed across the quad to the hall for breakfast, “and laying it out bluntly is the best way for her, as hard and unreasonable as it seems right now”.

“Mind if I use your phone?”, Rupert asked and Marie pushed it towards him as a gesture of agreeance, though the phone hardly moved. She focused on the lines of girls, frowning slightly at the jostling near the front of the second formers, while Rupert dialled.

“Watcher’s Council are up by now right?”, Rupert asked, his voice muffled by the cigarette, “Well - too bloody late to be second guessing now, if I get Travers up in his jim-jams all the more fun I suppose”. Marie opened her mouth to reply and then shook her head as she decided better of it. Which was just as well since someone had clearly answered,

“It’s Rupert Giles”, and the sarcasm, the attitude was gone from Rupert’s voice, “Yes, she passed on the message”, there was a long silence and Marie couldn’t quite decide if it was more awkward to keep staring out the window or to turn around and watch Rupert. After all, she could hardly go off and leave him in her office unattended - they were already inviting far too much attention of late between all of them.

“Yes”, Rupert stubbed out his cigarette, “That’s why I’m calling. The answer’s yes, on condition that I finish off down here”. Then a few more yesses followed and a single no before Rupert bade whoever had answered - and Marie assumed it was indeed Quentin Travers - a farewell.

“He’s a pompous twat”, Rupert said as soon as the phone hit the cradle and Marie didn’t manage to suppress the chuckle at his words, “but I’ll be damned if he didn’t give me what I wanted”.

“Which was?”, Marie finally turned around.

“I agreed to take up my position as a Watcher full-time again, if they let me finish out my training with you”, he replied as he stood up, placed the ashtray back on Marie’s desk and led the way to the door.

“Is that what you want?”, Marie asked, “to be a Watcher”.

“Does it matter?”, Rupert asked, “did any of us ask for any of this? Alicia didn’t ask to be a Slayer, nor Sally a werewolf, and Darrell sure as hell didn’t ask to be tortured but they all have to deal with it - taking up my duties pales in comparison to that. It’s not what I want - not always - but it’s where I should be”.

Marie wanted to tell Rupert that she was proud of him but he wasn’t a man to accept such statements so the second they stepped out of the room, she let him switch the conversation to his plans for the next few days. She thought once or twice about admonishing him for discussing the supernatural while they were out and about but by now all the girls were in the hall.

She felt Alicia’s eyes on them as soon as they entered the hall and she glanced at Rupert to see if he felt it too. The way his back had gone stiff, she guessed he had.

“Go ahead to the staff table, it’s my turn to sit with the Fifth formers”, Marie said, only remembering when she saw the empty chair at their table. Since Alicia’s calling, she had only had to sit with them once - and it was before Sally had been bitten so was marginally less awkward than she expected today’s seating arrangements to be.

“Rather you than me”, Rupert replied and he strode across the hall to where the majority of the staff were seated. Marie wondered if he noticed the admiring glances from some of the girls as he crossed the room.

“Morning Miss Potts”, and she smiled politely at the fifth formers who greeted her as she sat down. The fifth formers were, generally speaking, more than able to self-monitor but Marie found herself grateful, and not for the first time, that Miss Grayling still insisted on a teacher being present at each table. It gave her an insight that she wouldn’t otherwise have.

Alicia avoided her gaze directly but mercifully this wasn’t uncommon given the girl’s propensity to be involved in things she shouldn’t be when she was younger. She was holding court as normal and when Marie did catch her eye for the briefest of moments, she was relieved to see that Alicia managed a smile of sorts.

Sally was behaving much as she always did and Marie was beginning to see why Rupert had been so concerned by it. There was an unsettledness to the girl’s eyes that Marie knew meant that when Sally actually allowed all of this to sink it, it would hit her hard, but history told her that there was no use battering against stubborn stoicism. Sally had never been the most talkative of students but she too was joining in just enough to avoid arousing suspicion.

Darrell was another matter. Normally animated and just as jovial as Alicia even first thing in the morning, Darrell looked tired and agitated. Marie watched as she scratched at the inside of her arm and, just like in Marie’s office, Sally subtly wrapped her hand around Darrell’s to stop her. Marie took a sip of her coffee and watched as Darrell tried her best not to immediately start scratching again. The doctor from the Watcher’s Council - not the hopeless case that Quentin recommended but one that Edna Giles herself actually held in regard - should be arriving by evening and she had booked plenty of time for Darrell to be seen without rushing.

Darrell must have felt her eyes on her because she looked up sharply and Marie had to fight not to recoil. For just a moment there had been darkness and despair like she had never seen in the eyes of a student, but as soon as she had seen it, it was gone. The hesitant smile offered straight after did little to settle her concerns.

 

 

* * *

  _Sally_

* * *

 

“Just how serious of an injury do you think you would heal from?”, Alicia asked and Sally found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she had argued more and stayed at school with Darrell. She suspected Marie did not want her around while Darrell spoke to the doctor, though she couldn’t fathom why.

“I haven’t given it much thought”, Sally replied as she ducked beneath another low branch on their so far unproductive investigation. Marie hadn’t even really told them what they were to be looking out for, just that it was to do with vampires.

“Would your hand grow back if it was cut off?”, Alicia asked and Sally shot her what she hoped was an incredulous look, for all the good it would do. Everything seemed to just bounce off of Alicia.

“I’d rather not find out”, Sally replied.

“I bet Darrell’s read something on it”, Alicia said and then a cold silence hung over them. Alicia cleared her throat and moved ahead of Sally to lead the way further into the woods.

“Do you think this has anything to do with the demon you and Rupert were tracking?”, Sally asked as they stopped to regain their bearings.

“Doubt it, we definitely killed that and Rupert didn’t mention anything about anymore or having anything to do with vampires”, Alicia replied and she hesitated. Then Alicia glanced at her with a look Sally had never seen directed at her by the other girl; a look that suggested she was about to open up to her.

“I…”, Alicia shoved her hands into her pockets, “You don’t think this has got anything to do with the Conduit do you?”

Sally tried not to bristle at those words but she could feel her muscles tighten and a hot rage hit her in the chest. She closed her eyes and took a breath to steady herself. She could feel it, the wolf, trying to claw control from her as the full-moon approached. Pushing it back down, she opened her eyes and pondered Alicia’s question for a moment longer,

“Those books did suggest it was difficult to kill”, she conceded, though the words were bitter in her mouth.

“I know I killed it...well I know I killed it’s form”, Alicia said and she started walking again, “but if it was back, wouldn’t we be seeing more vampires like before?”

“I don’t know”, and that was the worst part. They didn’t know. For all their efforts, although Sally hadn’t actually seen much effort on Alicia’s behalf to read through Marie’s books, there was no feasible way to patrol, kill monsters, manage their own changes, complete all their schoolwork, behave as normal as possible and read through all the history and lore of the supernatural world. And the people at Malory Towers who knew the most about all of this currently fell into two categories; people that weren’t telling them everything and person who was falling apart.

“I hate that they’re keeping things from us again”, Alicia said as they stepped through to where the trees began to thin out. Sally froze on the spot and recoiled at the scent ahead of them.

“Somethings there”, she felt her temple start to pound at the overwhelming essence creeping in and suffocating her, “It’s vampire but it’s not quite right, it’s heading...”. They didn’t have anymore time to think because a figure launched itself from the bushes and careened into Alicia, sending her crashing to the floor. Alicia rolled, forcing the vampire into the dirt as she staggered to her feet.

“What on earth?”, Alicia was still unsteady on her feet so when the vampire jumped back up to his feet and charged her a second time, Sally cut him off and slammed her fist into his chest.

He barely stumbled. Sally knew her moment of hesitation would cost her as soon as she did it, but before she had time to move the vampire wrapped his hand around her wrist and pulled. Her vision blurred and it felt like her head was ringing as the vampire snapped her wrist in one motion. She pulled away, only making the pain worse as she yanked her hand from his grasp. Stars of light dotted her vision before an amber hue coated everything and she - to her horror - felt a deep growl in her chest. She didn’t blame Alicia for recoiling. The vampire stormed back towards them and this time Alicia didn’t take any chances, dodging to the side and slamming a kick into the vampires back, using his own momentum against him. Sally made sure he ended up in the dirt by sweeping his legs from beneath him with a single kick. Alicia almost fell on top of the vampire and she used her whole body to force the stake through the back of the vampire.

A whole minute must have passed before either of them spoke.

“Bloody hell”, Alicia was almost panting and Sally almost managed a smile at how much Rupert was rubbing off on them both, as the exact same thought had been going through her head, “Do you think we’re supposed to gather up the dust or something?”

Sally grimaced as she looked at the only evidence of the vampire ever existing and asked, “Did you bring a container?”

“Not this time, left my packed lunch at school”, Alicia grinned and Sally rolled her eyes at the too-familiar coping mechanism.

“I doubt the dust would tell them anything”, Sally said and she looked up at the gap between the trees, “We need to get back before it gets too late”.

 

 

* * *

  _Alicia_

* * *

 

“Well, I think we found what you wanted us…”, Alicia trailed off as she strode into Marie’s office to find a man she didn’t recognise. It wasn’t until Sally arrived behind her and stepped past her to get to Darrell that she even noticed Darrell or Marie in the room.

“Is everything alright?”, Alicia asked as she deposited herself onto the sofa, much to the visible chagrin of the man stood in the centre of the room. She watched as Sally brushed her thumb against Darrell’s elbow, asking her own questions without speaking, a silent language that the two of them seemed to have perfected. Alicia looked away, suddenly feeling as though she were intruding on a moment she shouldn’t have seen.

“We weren’t quite done”, the man said and he was interrupted by Darrell,

“They can stay”.

More looks were shared before Marie finally relented and spoke, “This is Doctor Harris from the Watcher’s Council, I asked…”, and something about the way Marie paused to select her words carefully made Alicia uneasy, “I asked for a doctor from the council to meet with Darrell to discuss what happened last term”.

“He wants me to take tablets”, Darrell finished for Marie, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself as she spoke, “He thinks I…he thinks I’m going insane”.

“That isn’t what I said”, Doctor Harris took a step towards her and Darrell pulled away.

“You used nicer words but that’s the general idea, isn’t it?”, Darrell asked, “I know what tablets like this do to people, what they’ll do to me”.

The way Doctor Harris glanced at his watch at Darrell’s words made Alicia want to rip the thing off his wrist and stamp on it. It was at that, that she was reminded of Sally’s injury and she glanced at the other girl. Almost as though she read Alicia’s mind, Sally moved her hand out of view and shook her head.

“I believe you have post-traumatic stress and it is manifesting in the bizarre and harmful behaviour you are exhibiting”, Doctor Harris replied and he nodded quite pointedly at Darrell’s arm which was starting to bleed from where she had clearly been scratching at it, Darrell folded her arms again.

“You asked me here for my opinion”, the doctor addressed Marie this time, “this is my recommendation, if Miss Rivers will give her consent I can make sure the first batch of tablets arrive tomorrow”. Alicia had never seen Marie look so cold as she met Doctor Harris’s gaze and then turned to Darrell.

“The choice isn’t mine to make”, she said.

Darrell was leant against the windowsill now and Sally and her were speaking too quietly for Alicia to hear. Finally, Sally turned to Doctor Harris,

“Will it help her? Will she sleep, stop having nightmares, all of those things which…”, and Sally had a wobble of emotion quite unlike her before composing herself to wait for Doctor Harris’s answer.

“Yes, at least until I complete my full assessment - there may be something better but this will help for now”. The silence was painful and Alicia found herself staring at her hands just for somewhere to look.

She heard the sound of pen on paper and looked up in time to see Darrell sign the bottom of a letter and push it towards Doctor Harris.

“Thank you”, and he pushed it so quickly into his briefcase and gathered up his coat with such a look of vindication that Alicia wondered if she would ever again dislike a person so much after spending so little time with them, “we will make sure they arrive discretely, instructions will be provided. I will book another visit for two weeks time. Good night”.

Darrell didn’t answer him and just turned her back on them all to look out the window. The door shut behind the doctor with a thud far too loud for the room.

“We need to head down”, Marie said to Sally who looked so miserable that Alicia almost got up to comfort her, “Rupert is making arrangements for your form…”

Sally followed Marie dutifully out of the room, though it looked like she might refuse for a moment, leaving Alicia and Darrell stood in silence. Alicia tried to think of something, _anything_ , to say but nothing seemed right.

So she said nothing.


	6. Chapter 6

_ Alicia _

 

“I can’t believe we’re all still going out”, Alicia leant against the outside wall of the North Tower and cast another look up at the dark clouds that had swept in that morning and become a permanent fixture by the afternoon blocked out most of the sunlight, reducing it to a dull glow.

“You know what Moira’s like when she’s made a decision”, Sally looked exhausted, three nights of the full moon followed by three more of hunts and searches that turned up nothing.

“What is taking them so long anyhow?”, Alicia asked and for a moment she thought their form were about ready to head out when the door opened.

“I can’t bear being in there with them any longer”, Darrell said by way of explanation and greeting, “Gwen and Maureen are still getting ready”.

“Of course they are”, Alicia sighed and she pushed herself off the wall and nodded for them to walk a few metres away from the door, just in case anyone walked out on them. The wind whipped around them and Alicia took another look out at the overcast hills and grimaced. Damn Moira and her pride.

“In all your reading, ever come across vampires that are strong - I mean much stronger than they usually are?”, Alicia asked.

“Is that what you’re all running around investigating is it?”, Darrell asked and neither Alicia or Sally must have done a very good job of hiding their expressions because Darrell shook her head, “I’m ill, I’m not oblivious. Even if no-one’s telling me anything.”

“We should have said something”, Alicia felt uncomfortable in her guilt and she shifted from foot to foot.

“I know Marie and Rupert will have sworn you to silence”, Darrell said, “Vampires get stronger the older they get, like Slayers do.” At that the door opened and the rest of their form came out, they looked about as fed up as Alicia felt.

“Right, well, let’s get a move on then before the weather gets bad”, Moira headed up the walk and Alicia barely kept the smirk from her face as someone - she suspected Irene - snorted with disbelief at Moira’s statement.

“Oh wait a moment”, and Alicia couldn’t work out if it was Maureen or Gwen but either way she was utterly fed up.

“You lot wait here as long as you want, we’re going on ahead”, and with that she promptly turned and started walking, ignoring Moira’s calls for her to come back. She was somewhat relieved when Darrell and Sally followed her.

By the time the others gathered themselves together and started walking, the three girls had a reasonable head start on them.

“It’s going to rain in half an hour I reckon”, Alicia said as they began the climb up the hill, “You were saying?”

Darrell glanced over her shoulder to check they were far enough in front, “As vampires get older, they get stronger. Their blood gets stronger as well. So the healing part of it works quicker and for worse injuries”.

“Is that the same for werewolves?”, Alicia asked and Darrell shrugged.

“There’s less on werewolves in the books I’ve read”, she admitted, “and I can’t find any records of people ingesting werewolf blood like with vampire blood”. She jumped as Alicia grabbed her arm and Alicia felt guilty all over again.

“Sorry”, she held her palm up in apology before they carried on walking, “People have drank vampire blood? And not become vampires?”.

“A few”, Darrell stopped for a moment and held out her own palm as the first raindrops started, “it heals serious injuries in humans, brings them back from the brink of death from what I’ve read. You only become a vampire if they drink your blood to the point of death and then give you theirs. Lots of biting and blood swapping really, rather think the supernatural world is full of it”.

There was something about the way Darrell delivered the last line that made Alicia feel, just for a moment, like her old friend was back.

“Do you think Moira will call off the walk now?”, Sally asked as they glanced back at the rest of their class.

“I can’t hear Maureen complaining yet so probably not”, Alicia said as she started walking again.

“Count yourself lucky”, Sally replied and Darrell laughed, the first genuine sound of happiness that Alicia had heard in a long time. None of them had spoken to Darrell about her tablets, nor the fact that she looked as though she were actually sleeping now and that she  _ seemed _ better. It was still too raw for them all to discuss.

The droplets of rain became a bit heavier and finally they heard Moira calling up to them. Just as Alicia was about to turn, Sally grabbed her arm. Tightly.

“It’s them”, Sally said, a cold urgency to her voice that made Alicia shudder. She knew, from the look in the other girl’s eyes, from the way she said those words that Sally meant vampires like the one they had struggled against a week ago. 

“Are you sure?”, Alicia whispered. The look Sally gave her answered her question. Darrell, who must have heard at least some of their exchange, walked down the hill to cut off Moira who was storming up towards them, meeting her far enough down to allow Sally and Alicia to talk.

“That’s impossible”, Alicia said, “they can’t...can they?”

“I don’t know Alicia but they’re heading this way”, Sally replied.

“Are they underground?”, Alicia asked hopefully but Sally had started to shake her head before she finished speaking. 

Darrell rejoined them, “They’re all heading back, I said I was staying out for a while to get some fresh air on account of missing out on all the walks and games so far this term. Whatever is wrong?”

“The strong vampires?”, Alicia asked, “Is there any way they could be really strong, really powerful without being old?”

“I-I suppose”, Darrell looked like she was running through memories of hundreds of pages as she fumbled over words, “I mean...it...the Conduit did it, made them all strong and there’s probably other demons, spells that could...why?”

“Because there’s about four of them headed this way”, Sally said, “despite the obvious barrier which should be keeping them away”.

“Vampires which were in...in...I suppose they would consider it prime condition? Perfect balance of age and strength, could withstand sunlight for very short passages of time but not. I suppose with the clouds blocking out the sun…”, and there was a terror in Darrell’s ramblings that made Alicia reach out and grab her shoulder to stop her.

“Are you able to run?”, Alicia asked, grateful when Darrell focused on her.

“Yes, it’ll hurt but I can run”

“Hurt is better than dead”, Alicia said.

“The others will make it back past the ward in time”, Sally said, “the vampires are heading straight for us up here”.

“Rupert mentioned this bizarre deathwish vampires have where they flock towards the Slayer”, Alicia replied and then turned her attention back on Darrell, “I need you to run to the cottage. Don’t stop for anything. Rupert’s there. Get him and stay there. Now”. Darrell nodded mutely and then took off. 

“She’ll never outrun them”, Alicia said as soon as she turned around, and it was true. At full health, Darrell could outpace weaker vampires for a time at least but these were a different type of monster. 

“Then we keep them off her”, Sally’s whole body was tensed, “You’ll see them any moment…”

And she did. Alicia’s heart raced as the impossible happened and four vampires just seemed to appear at the brow of the hill in the middle of the afternoon.

  
  


_ Sally _

Being hit by a vampire hurt. But it was the sort of hurt that quickly dulled into an ache and then, with the adrenaline of the fight, faded away to memory. By the time Sally even thought about it again, it was usually healed.

Being hit by the new type of vampire felt like a wall had crashed into her.

Sally vision doubled and then slid back into a single view as she got back to her feet in time to dip under a follow up punch. Werewolf regeneration still kicked in quick enough for her to step back out of reach. The pain just didn’t fade away like it usually did.

She tried to count the vampires again as she closed the distance to Alicia but there was too much movement, too many bodies to keep track of.

“Stake”, Alicia’s voice came out of the chaos and Sally looked around in time to catch the wooden implement thrown at her. 

“Impale!”, and with barely a second more to react, Sally turned the stake around and pushed it deep into the chest of the vampire falling towards her. He burst into dust, scattering over her in a cloud that she tried desperately not to breathe in.

She turned as she staggered alongside Alicia, still clutching the stake so tightly she wondered how she hadn’t snapped it. She was immediately back on the defensive as another vampire swung at them both, a whirlwind of fists and rage.

Sally ducked in to get closer and swung the vampire by the front of his shirt, sending him crashing into Alicia. Prepared for it, Alicia punched the vampire in the stomach and when he buckled over dropped her elbow as hard as she could onto the back of his head.

“Watch out for the others”, she reminded as she flipped the vampire over and hit him in the face.

Sally turned around sharply and it felt as though all the air was gone. She struggled to catch her breath as she looked desperately for the two other vampires. The sound of the vampire being dusted barely registered as she finally spotted the vampires running in the direction they had sent Darrell. 

She didn’t wait for Alicia. 

After weeks of restraining her new supernatural abilities, it felt peculiar to use them to their maximum potential. Sally was keenly aware that if anyone were to look out from Malory Towers, there would be no possible way to explain how she were running so fast.

Even then it didn’t seem quick enough.

She could  _ feel _ Alicia catching her up but she kept her focus on Darrell’s trace, hurdling the fence to land in the field nearest the cottage. Her whole body felt like ice as she saw the two vampires close in on Darrell and shove her off balance and she pushed everything she had into reaching them before anything…

The vampires recoiled. Even from her distance, Sally could see the jolt of shock in their undead forms and they moved away from Darrell who scrambled back to her feet. There was a moment where Darrell seemed to stare down the vampires before she fled once more.

“...the hell?”, Alicia came to a stop alongside her. Sally hadn’t even noticed she had stopped running.

“I don’t know”, Sally felt as though the threads she needed to understand what she had just seen were just out of her reach. There was little more time to ponder what had happened because the two vampires had noticed they were no longer alone.

“That’ll be an interesting talk later”, Alicia said as she retook the lead to meet the vampires head on.

Both charged up on adrenaline, the fight didn’t last as long, especially as the vampires seemed unsettled somehow and blows that Sally and Alicia had struggled to get past the defences of the previous two were landed. Still, Sally was struggling to catch her breath once the last vampire was dusted and she crumpled to her knees as the adrenaline wore off.

“Well, better late than never”, Alicia greeted Rupert as he ran up to them, “we did all the hard work”.

“Sorry, I came as quickly as I could - Marie should be down here soon”, Rupert said and Sally looked over at the cottage to see that the fire had been lit and smoke spilled from the chimney, their call-to-arms as it were.

“There’s probably more of them”, Alicia said, “those four nearly had us at one point. If two of them hadn’t chased Darrell…”

“Was she okay when she got to you?”, Sally interrupted Alicia and Rupert looked surprised at the brusqueness of her question, truth be told she surprised herself a little with it.

“She was a little shaken up but otherwise, yes”, Rupert considered the question.

“I need to go and check on her”, Sally got back to her feet, “I’ll be a few minutes”, and she headed down to the cottage.

The only light in the cottage came from the fireplace and Sally was glad for her enhanced vision. She couldn’t see anyone in the front room.

“Darrell?”

Silence greeted her. She stepped through to the second room where the cage was and paused when she realised that the blanket in the cage, placed to preserve her dignity during the full-moon had been pulled down and under the wooden table turned den that she had woken up under this full moon just gone. Sally stepped inside the cage and crouched down to touch where she hoped Darrell’s hand was.

“It’s me”, she said softly and was relieved when the blanket slowly lowered.

“I don’t understand what happened”, Darrell said eventually as she pushed the blanket off of her, “And I...I kept seeing these things that...they were horrible and I just wanted it all to go away”. Darrell buried her face in her hands and Sally sat beside her and put her arm around her.

“I thought the tablets were helping”, Sally said.

“So did I. They did...for a bit”, Darrell’s voice was muffled by her hands. 

“I need to go and help the others”, Sally lifted her hand and brushed her fingers against Darrell’s curls, “Can you stay here until I come back and get you?”. It felt so unnatural to be talking to Darrell as though she were defenseless; Darrell hadn’t needed rescuing from anything since First Form when Gwen set her up to take the fall for a particularly malicious prank. While Sally had sometimes wished that Darrell might need her the same way Sally needed Darrell, she had never wished for anything like this.

“I’ll…”, and Darrell gestured vaguely towards the front room.

“As soon as I can, I’ll be back”, Sally promised and she got back to her feet to return to the others.

 

 

_ Rupert _

“She alright then?”, Rupert asked. They had only just finished catching Marie up to speed; who had somehow convinced another teacher to cover the rest of her last class.

“As can be”, Sally replied, “She’s staying there until I come back”.

“Right, then let’s go hunting”, and Rupert heaved his holdall up and led the way.

They didn’t speak much beyond directions and for the others to ask Sally whether she had picked anything up yet, and the darkness which covered the sky didn’t seem to be letting up. Sally tracked the fading trace of the four vampires they had killed back and over the hill crest, then down towards the coastline.

Just as they thought they might have to track back and try to pick up the trace again, Sally caught the faintest touch of it and led them towards it, back inland and towards the abandoned church where they had first encountered the Conduit.

“This is looking worse and worse”, Rupert muttered, more to himself than anyone else but he caught Marie nodding her agreement.

“You know this place?”, Sally asked and Rupert remembered that Sally hadn’t been exposed to all of this when they first encountered the demon.

“The Conduit”, was all Alicia needed to say and Rupert watched as dark emotions flickered over Sally’s expression.

“This is too coincidental”, Marie called them to a halt and they crouch out of sight of the church, “How many can you sense?”

“Five”, Sally kept watching in the direction of the church as they spoke.

“We cannot be separated in there”, Marie said, “As soon as they get us alone, we will be killed”. It was a jarring thought. Rupert knew logically that he wasn’t invincible but fighting alongside Alicia for these past few months had lulled him into a false sense of strength and power; Marie’s words pulled that thought out from under him in a flash.

“Here”, Rupert handed out the blades from his bag. Alicia and Marie took them straight away but Sally waved it off.

“I haven’t trained with a blade”, she said by way of explanation, and Rupert reluctantly put it back in the holdall and, after pulling out a back-up stake and some bottles of Holy Water, shoved it under the nearest bush.

“No time like the present to confront our mortality I suppose”, Rupert stood up as he spoke and looked at the three faces just as grim as he supposed his was.

“Stay together”, Marie reminded one more time and with that they stormed on the church.

The vampires should have sensed them but the expression on the one nearest the door when Alicia kicked it through told a different story. It was that second of surprise that bought them time and space. Alicia kicked one of the chairs up and into the face of the vampire, sending him staggering backwards while she rushed in. The blade slide through the vampire without much effort and Alicia tore it upwards, splitting the vampire in two.

By the time the remaining vampires were mobile and bearing down on them, they were on even numbers.

Rupert charged back at the vampire who lunged at him, using his body weight and height to force it back so he could take a swing with his blade. It only nicked the arm of it much to his chagrin.

When it ran in a second time the fight became rough and scrappy, Rupert slamming his fist into whichever part he could reach and avoiding the fangs for all he was worth. He rolled to avoid a stamp from a second vampire, and the one he was dealing with tackled him at the waist, sending them both back into the dust.

He heard the sound of a crossbow being fired and then the unmistakable sound of flesh being pierced. He struggled with the vampire to see who had been hit. Then the weight lifted from him and the vampire was flung to the side. Alicia's hand grabbed his and yanked him to his feet. Somewhere in the chaos, Alicia had despatched her vampire. A quick glance reassured Rupert that Marie and Sally were holding their own. He finally got a better swing on his blade and this time it struck deep on the vampire, buying Alicia the time to drive her stake through it. Rupert stumbled over to assist Marie, knocking the vampire aside as he did and buying her some time and space. More adept than he at wielding a blade, Marie took the opportunity to thrust the blade through the vampires eye socket. The final burst of dust beside him signalled the end of the short battle and Rupert took stock of them all. 

“You're hurt”, Alicia closed the distance to Marie and took the woman's arm to investigate the injury. Rupert winced as he inspected the cross bolt injury. Marie had only just avoided a serious injury, a centimetre closer and they would be debating the best way to remove a bolt from someone's arm before they bled out. 

“It will heal”, Marie reassured the worried Slayer, “not as quickly as you but with time”. Rupert was relieved to see that was the only visible injury Marie had sustained.

“You're bleeding”, Marie had turned her attention to him. Rupert touched where she was indicating and his fingertips came away coated red. 

“That'll heal too”, he used her words back at her and got a raised eyebrow in response. The two girls reluctantly let Marie give them a cursory check and he wondered briefly how they would explain Sally's soon to be black eye. Satisfied that no one needed imminent treatment, Marie completed a check of the church while Rupert retrieved the holdall from outside. Finding nothing of value, Marie led the way silently back outside and towards school. 

“It's back isn't it?”, Alicia asked the question none of them wanted to. 

“I don't know”


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

  _Marie_

* * *

 

Marie peeled back the bandage; her teeth clenched so that she didn’t gasp in pain. She had turned down the salve Elizabeth had offered; they had, after all, agreed to only use it in absolute emergencies. It wasn’t easy to make and it wouldn’t have helped with the pain anyway.

“That looks nasty”, and Marie wished that, just for once, Alicia would knock before entering a room.

“It’s quite on track for healing up, I just need to change the bandage”, Marie replied. It wasn't a lie, a week after the crossbow bolt had caught the outside of her arm and it was nearly closed up. Thankfully the chilly weather had given her reasonable cause for long sleeves.

“Have you found anything else?”, Alicia gestured at the books open on the table as she picked the new bandage up.

Marie thought about protesting against Alicia helping her but quietened the small voice of pride which insisted that a Slayer should not fuss over her Watcher.

“It's hard to know for certain but the more I read, the less certain I am the Conduit is dead”, Marie admitted as she helped the gauze over her healing wound and let Alicia wrap the bandage around.

“Have you told her?”, Alicia asked and Marie shook her head. While the four of them who had been at the church all had talked about the possibility of the Conduit being back, she had not yet found a good time to broach the topic with Darrell.

“I can't quite decide when or even if there is a good time to discuss it without pushing her over the edge”, Marie admitted and then, after a pause, she added, “her father has insisted that a clinical psychologist meet with her today, I believe the Rivers arrived in town last night”.

“How does he know about…”, and realisation dawned on Alicia's face, “Felicity”. Marie nodded.

They… she... had made a rather grand mistake in forgetting that whilst Felicity Rivers was only a second former, she knew her sister better than almost anyone. So whilst they had done their best to brush off or half explain questions about Darrell amongst her form and the faculty - at times resorting to magical means when the former options failed - they had missed the keen eye of her younger sister who had promptly passed on her concerns to her parents.

Marie had been the one to take the call from Mr Rivers who wanted to know what exactly was happening with his eldest daughter. Marie couldn't even remember how she had smoothed over the conversation but it had ended amicably with this date set for Darrell to meet with a clinical psychologist from London.

“What's going to happen?”, Alicia asked as she finished taping down the bandage.

“I don't know”, Marie didn't see the point in lying, “They could withdraw her from school”.

“Is that all that bad?”, Alicia asked.

“On the surface, no, but it's the supernatural world that has done this and the Council have already made it quite clear that they don't want the civilian world to take over her care”, Marie sighed. That had been another difficult phone call and Quentin Travers was far less reasonable that Mr Rivers.

“Why do we care what the Watcher’s Council want?”, Alicia tidied away the medical supplies into Marie's first aid box.

“It's less caring about what they want and more protecting you and Sally from prying eyes, what do you think would happen if someone were to watch Sally too closely around the full moon”, Marie tidied up the books and led them out of the cottage, locking it up behind them.

“Darrell wouldn't tell anyone”, Alicia protested, though it sounded like it was more from loyalty than belief.

“In her well moments, no she wouldn't”, Marie agreed, “but Alicia, I think we're past the point of pretending now. Darrell is unwell and while she is coping more than half the time, in her less coherent moments, she might talk and someone might listen”.

“Are you sitting in with her?”, Alicia batted her hand against the tall grass as they walked.

“No, no one is allowed to”, Marie replied, “as soon as I know anything, I will tell you. Now go on, it won't do your reputation any good if you keep being seen with a teacher”. Alicia gave her a bemused look and Marie knew that the young Slayer knew precisely what Marie was doing in trying to be lighthearted but she complied nonetheless and walked on ahead.

Mr and Mrs Rivers were waiting in her office by the time she arrived and she spent the next thirty minutes talking to them before calling for Elizabeth to bring Darrell up.

Darrell looked understandably confused when she stepped inside and found her parents there.

“Has something happened?”, Darrell asked, “Where's Felicity? Is she okay?”, and Mrs Rivers got up and put an arm around Darrell, reassuring her that her sister was fine as she guided her to sit on the sofa.

“She's worried about you”, Mr Rivers took over, “about some of the things you've been saying and doing recently, she wrote to us”.

“I'm fine”, Darrell’s response was immediate and her eyes flickered towards Marie, a helplessness in them that was heartbreaking to see.

“It's okay, the teachers know, I know you've been trying to hide it when you can”, Mr Rivers took one of Darrell’s hands and squeezed it, “but you don't need to hide it anymore, there's someone here who can help you”.

“I know sometimes the… the painkillers made me behave rather odd but I'm alright”, and Darrell might have sounded believable, if just for a moment, if she weren't shaking so much.

“It's okay”, Mrs Rivers hugged Darrell again, “I know it must be scary but Dr Cudson is going to talk it through with you and then we're going to all have a talk about what we do next”.

Marie felt helpless herself as Darrell eventually crumbled and let herself be taken down to Miss Grayling’s office to meet with Dr Cudson.

 

 

* * *

  _Sally_

* * *

 

Sally sat on the edge of Darrell’s bed; three exercise books sat on her lap. She sensed Alicia coming before the door to the dorm opened but didn't bother to greet her. The bed sunk a little as Alicia sat beside her,

“The others will be up soon, once they're asleep we need to patrol”, and Sally wanted to snap at Alicia and tell her she knew what they needed to do but stopped herself at the last second. Alicia just needed to fill the silence with something. It was her way of coping.

“What's that?”, Alicia tapped the exercise books and Sally opened the first one and flicked through the pages so Alicia could see. Page after page of Latin and Greek, written in Darrell’s tidy handwriting. So far she had found three books full of it hidden away amongst Darrell’s belongings. From the little that Sally could understand, it read like nonsense.

“Maybe they're right”, Sally swallowed the lump in her throat as she reached over, pulled open her own bedside drawer and threw the exercise books in to hide them.

Darrell was spending the night in the nearest hospital, undergoing tests to rule out all kinds of horrible things that Sally didn't even want to think about. The doctor who had spent most of the day with Darrell and her family was, by Marie's reckoning, quite sure these were unlikely to find anything and was merely being thorough.

“It would explain a lot”, Alicia sounded about as sure as Sally felt.

“They don't know the full story though”, Sally replied, “It...you can't diagnose things like that without...when you don’t know everything”.

“I don’t think we can just stroll up to the that doctor and tell him that he’s a bit hasty in considering diagnosing our friend with psychosis because actually she might be supernaturally traumatised by an ancient demon”, Alicia replied and Sally flinched at the bluntness of the statement, even though she knew it was silly to do so.

“Did they let you see her before she left?”, Alicia asked and Sally nodded, “How was she?”

Sally didn’t know how to condense the overwhelming emotions that had radiated off of Darrell when Sally saw her for the few minutes the doctor had granted while Darrell packed an overnight bag. In the end, Sally hadn’t been able to say all that much of use and she felt all the worse for it when she watched her friend get into her parents’ car and disappear into the night. Marie had sat with her for a long time on the steps of Malory Towers, gently talking Sally through what the doctor had said.

“I don’t know”, Sally eventually said, and then she added, “I don’t want the others to ask me questions”. She flinched as she felt Alicia’s hand on her shoulder, having never received any type of physical reassurance from the other girl. Alicia herself must have wondered why she had chosen to do so as well because she looked almost as surprised as Sally felt.

“Just...”, Alicia pulled her hand back and looked away, “pretend you’re already asleep, I’ll deal with them”.

So that’s what Sally did, changed into the clothes she would need to go out in once the others were asleep and pulled the privacy curtain around her bed. She heard the whispers as the others arrived and pulled her pillow over her head, willing them all to just leave her be. Alicia was true to her word though, and none bothered her. They went about their nightly routines and then the lights went off. Within moments, the sleeping charms did their job and she heard Alicia get out of bed and change back into her clothes.

“Thank you”, Sally said as they left the dorm and was grateful when all Alicia did was nod, “I presume we're doing the same as the rest of the week, looking for vampires and signs of the Conduit?”

“Marie wants us to go back to the Church and search the graveyard behind it”, Alicia replied, “she’s found notes of there being catacombs somewhere on the grounds”.

Sally stopped and directed them back the way they had come, “one of the teachers is coming”. They eventually weaved back through to the back stairs, leaving one of the windows in a study room open again as a back up. The night was cold, and Sally shuddered as they stepped out into the darkness. They kept to the shadows as much as possible, cautious of prying eyes catching them out of bed.

“Do you think they'll let her come back?”, Sally hadn't been able to ask Marie earlier, the words had just stuck in her throat. She didn't think Alicia would know, not really, but she just needed to get the question out so it stopped going round and round in her head.

“Watcher’s Council have ordered Marie and Rupert to ensure she remains under care of the Council”, Alicia said and she shrugged, “they covered up a massacre so who knows what pull they have? I don't suppose that necessarily means she'll come back though”. She took over leading the way.

Sally was too tired to ask anymore questions.

 

 

* * *

_Alicia_

* * *

 

It was far easier to focus on what they _could_ do than to sit and worry about things entirely out of their control. Alicia was glad that Marie knew her well enough to keep her busy. Even if Sally didn't agree, Alicia thought it was probably the best thing for her as well.

They were quiet through to the church; the sight of the building seemed to cast a shadow over them both and they stood for a few moments looking up at it.

“Let's start with the graveyard”, Alicia broke the silence and they moved beyond the church to the graveyard. Time had been as unkind to the grounds of the church as it had been to the building. Tombstones crumbled with age and weeds wrapped around the final eulogies of loved ones engraved deep in stone. Some graves looked disturbed and Alicia didn't stop to wonder if the undead or graverobbers were responsible for that.

“Let's spread out”, Alicia suggested, “If you hear or sense _anything_ we regroup, hear?”.

Sally made a noise of agreeance before they separated and Alicia hoped she would be true to that and not let her emotions get the better of her. Sally might act as though she had her new life tidied away and under control but Alicia could see - if only for fleeting moments - the anger that lay deep inside the other girl, even if she were far better at hiding it than the books suggested werewolves typically were.

Alicia pushed her way through the tangles of foliage and pulled weeds up as she scanned the earth for an entrance of some sort. Marie had reminded her that whilst most catacombs had grand entrances, those that were hiding something were likely to have been deliberately destroyed and the rubble of the entrance used to block access.

She had reached the far end of the the graveyard and was looping back down when she heard a whistle and she sped up, jogging towards where Sally had stopped near the opposite boundary of the church grounds.

“Danger or entrance?”, Alicia asked as she reached Sally's side.

“Perhaps both, does that spot look out of place to you?”, Sally asked and Alicia looked at the area in question.

“Yes”, she approached the ground, gnarled and twisted with weeds, which stood too high compared to the rest of the graveyard, as though soil had been packed atop of something in a mound.

“I think I saw an old spade that we could use in the church basement”, Alicia said and she ran back into the building to retrieve it.

Alicia used the spade while Sally kicked aside as much mud as possible. When they finally hit something solid, Alicia set the spade down and they used their hands to pull out bits of stone which they soon realised were parts of an old Tomb. It must have been at least thirty minutes before Alicia pulled out a stone that finally confirmed they had found what they were looking for. Sally recoiled from the mound and a brief look of fear crossed her face before she steadied herself.

“Death”, she explained when Alicia asked if she were okay, “everything down there is covered in death, can't you feel it?”. Alicia was, not for the first time, grateful that her call to being the Slayer did not bring with it enhanced senses of the same calibre as Sally had. They moved the remaining stones away with renewed vigour until they could fit inside, then pulled some more out for good measure.

“Well, I suppose creepy comes with the job description”, Alicia said as she took the torch out of her jacket pocket and stepped down into the catacombs, “are you going to be alright down here?”.

Sally just followed her as her answer. Even Alicia couldn't bring herself to speak as they moved down amongst the rows and rows of skeletons, tidied away amongst the dust and cobwebs, row after row in the walls. Any attempt at flippancy stuck in her throat as she remembered the skeletons from the previous term.

“Can you shine the torch over this?”, Alicia jumped at the sound of Sally's voice and then forced a laugh to calm her nerves. She spun the torch around to a small room off the main corridor, there was an ornate stone coffin atop a platform, dustings of what looked like gold caught under the torch light.

“So this is what being rich got you after death huh?”, Alicia stepped forward to get a better look.

“Can I have that?”, Sally held out her hand for the torch and crouched down to get a better look at the etchings on the end of the coffin, “this looks familiar but my Latin isn't brilliant”.

“I fooled about in the few Latin classes they ran in second form”, Alicia admitted.

“Colour me shocked”, Sally replied dryly and she tilted the torch again, “I was so relieved it was only a few lessons and not a permanent class…”

“Well we weren't to know that we would be pursuing careers where using the English language for cryptic messages is frowned up”, Alicia said, and she pointed at a word, “that's a surname, Berenger”.

She felt her heart beat faster as she realised where she recognised it from and she tapped it, “that's the surname of one of the monks who entombed the Conduit”. She stood up and took the torch back off Sally, scanned it around the edge of the coffin and then grabbed the stone and slid it. It barely shifted. Sally grabbed the opposite side and, after a struggle, they pushed it to one side just enough to see inside.

Dust and the stale echoes of death rose from the depth of the coffin and Alicia waved it away as she covered her mouth with her arm. Once the dust cleared she shone the torch inside. The skeleton inside, wrapped in heavy brown robes startled her even though she expected it. She gestured for Sally to help her search and they carefully moved the robes to check the coffin. Alicia's fingers brushed against the spine of a book and she breathed in sharply as she pulled it out.

She handed Sally the torch and opened the book with slow and delicate movements that had her holding her breath lest something rip or fall into dust.

“It's in French”, and Alicia quickly scanned down the page and then turned to the next page, “this is what they were looking for, this is why the Conduit had vampires congregating here last term. Here”, she didn't even try to hide the excitement in her voice as she pointed to a sentence, “this talks about an attack centuries ago that Rupert and Marie didn't even know about”.

She glanced at Sally who was reading the text along with her, after another minute she looked up at Alicia, her expression all the more serious for the darkness around them.

“We need to get this back to the others”


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

  _Alicia_

* * *

 

 

“Thank you again for finding us somewhere nearby to stay at such short notice”, Alicia stopped at the threshold to Marie's office and listened.

“It's no bother at all”, Marie was saying, “Harriet will be expecting you and this way you can stay nearby, at least for a while. Do call me once you arrive won't you?”

Alicia didn't move away from the doorway quick enough, and when Darrell’s parents nearly walked into her, the best she could manage was a sheepish smile. For all her bravado, there were just some people she would never had dreamt of cheeking - even before all of this - and Mr and Mrs Rivers were two of them.

“I...Good morning”, Alicia offered eventually and Marie shook her head in what looked like despair from the doorway.

“Good Morning, Alicia”, and to her relief there was a flicker of a smile on Mrs Rivers’ face, “Darrell is back in the San now if you want to go and visit her, I know she would like to see you and Sally both”. Alicia nodded, not trusting herself to speak and Mr and Mrs Rivers bade a final goodbye to Marie.

“So how long were you eavesdropping?”, Marie asked as she shut her office door.

“Who's Harriet? One of your secret Watcher club members?”, Alicia asked, “I know you won't have put the Rivers somewhere without having eyes on them”.

“Something like that”, Marie replied, “could you go and get Sally for me then meet me at the San? Do be subtle about it, there's some unease amongst some of the students about Darrell’s condition”. Alicia nodded and ran down towards the music rooms where she had seen Sally disappear off to a little earlier.

The first room had Irene in, her eyes closed as she ran through a song Alicia had heard her humming to herself the evening before. Alicia wanted to stop and watch a while, just to get a moment or two of something other than darkness and evil in her life but she had to find Sally. She found her in the room at the end of the hall.

Sally didn't play with the same natural talent that Irene did but Alicia had to confess that her ongoing hostility towards the other girl had prevented her from seeing that Sally was good in a different way, born out of practice and hard work.

“Hello”, Sally greeted, then finished whatever the piece was she was playing as Alicia shut the door.

“Bumped into the Rivers on their way out, Darrell’s in the San and Marie asked me to come and fetch you”, Alicia explained. Sally frowned as she closed the piano.

“How is she not in a hospital?”, Sally asked.

“The Council I guess”, Alicia shrugged, “I presume Marie will know?”. Sally hesitated at the piano and Alicia waited for whatever was on her mind to be said,

“I don't know what to say to her”, she said eventually.

“You will”, Alicia said, “because you'll see her and know that she's the same person you… she's still Darrell”.

Sally seemed reassured by this and they made their way up to the San where they met Marie. They were all taken into a side room by Matron.

“Now, it is highly unusual that Darrell is even being allowed to remain here while all of this is going on”, Matron’s glanced at Marie as she spoke, a discontentment in her eyes that suggested she didn’t agree with the decision, “so we have to keep things calm in there. The doctor has put her on medication and she is a bit out of sorts, don't talk too much, don't get her excited or worked up and if she asks about your extracurricular activities, keep it short and move on to something else. Do I make myself clear?”.

Both girls nodded, and Matron led them to one of the single occupant rooms,

“She is supposed to be resting”, Matron said as they stepped in, “as you can see, she follows instructions regarding rest as well as she always has”. Darrell managed a smile from where she was stood at the window but it looked a little forced. Matron left them alone.

Alicia let Sally step forward first, though once again she felt like she was intruding as Sally wrapped her arms around Darrell and hugged her tightly. Darrell buried her face in Sally's shoulder and hugged back.

“I'm so glad they didn't take me away”, she heard Darrell say and it brought a lump to Alicia's throat that she quickly swallowed. Sally stepped back and turned away, Alicia imagined to settle her own emotions and Alicia hugged Darrell as well.

“Nice outfit”, she teased and Darrell shook her head with a smile. She was in plain grey pajama style trousers, a white t-shirt and white socks.

“I feel like I'm still at the hospital”, Darrell sighed as she walked back over to her bed and sat on it, “I'm not allowed shoes for some reason”.

“So what did they say? And how did you get brought back here?”, Alicia asked. Sally sat down on the bed beside Darrell and took her hand, brushed her thumb across the back of it.

Darrell didn't speak for a while, but Alicia could see her thinking about what she had been asked, eventually replying,

“The tests ruled out all the things like epilepsy or cancer”, Darrell said, “and since we can't... I couldn't tell anyone the truth about what happened, so they've diagnosed me with psychosis”.

“I'm sorry Darrell”, Alicia said, “we'll find some way to… I mean you're right, we can't tell them the truth but we must be able to get this settled somehow”.

“They might not be wrong”, Darrell said after a pause.

“You have a good reason to be finding things hard right now”, Alicia protested, and Sally gave her a look, a reminder to lower her voice.

“What happened to me…”, Darrell glanced away for a few seconds, “trauma can trigger psychosis. And... I do see things that aren't there”.

Sally took a sharp breath, and Darrell squeezed her hand. Alicia couldn’t get her body to move to offer any comfort to either of them.

“You never said…”

“It’s not easy to say, Alicia”, Darrell shrugged as she spoke and Alicia had to admit that she didn’t suppose it was. After all, minor unusual behaviours and whispers of mental illness had sent rumours and recoils through the other girls at Malory Towers. Alicia only hoped Sally never overhead any of the other girls talking.

“How come you’ve been allowed back?”, Sally spoke for the first time, and she seemed to fret for a moment over her words, “I mean, I’m glad they brought you back but how?”

“My parents wanted to take me back to London...”, Darrell stopped talking and grimaced, pressed her hand to one side of her temple until whatever it was passed, “sorry...there was a doctor, I didn’t recognise him. I think he was from the Watcher’s Council. He argued that pulling me out of school would make me worse because at least here I had some semblance of routine. Somehow his argument worked”.

“Sounds like the Council”, Alicia agreed, and there was a gentle knock on the door before Matron opened it and looked in.

“Just a minute more girls”.

There was no easy way to say goodbye so they just hugged Darrell again and got up to leave.

“Sometimes it talks to me”, it came out rushed, like a deeply held confession that Darrell couldn’t keep a grip of any longer.

Alicia froze and turned around, but Darrell wouldn’t look at her. Even for the vagueness of it, Alicia knew what “it” was.

“The Conduit”, Alicia said and Darrell nodded.

“I know he's gone, I know you killed him but ever since that day I…”, Darrell stopped talking and a look of something flashed across her eyes. She shook her head and rubbed at her eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to burden you with that. I think my lack of sleep is catching up with me”. That didn’t make Alicia or Sally feel any more reassured as they closed the door behind themselves.

 

 

* * *

  _Sally_

* * *

 

 

Three days had passed since Darrell had returned under the watchful eye of Matron and one or other of them had stayed with her or at least kept an eye on her at all times. Darrell hadn’t been allowed to return to school life yet, which was perhaps just as well given the rumour-mill that was churning throughout school.

Sally had stayed in the room with Darrell the first night, despite it usually being strictly forbidden. Darrell hadn’t slept well, despite the medication, and got up and paced the room multiple times during the night. Sally would have gone back every other night as well if she hadn't needed to return to her share of research and patrol duties with Alicia.

The monks’ book from the catacombs had been poured over in great detail, providing more information about the Conduit than they had found in all the other books combined. But a lot of it was written in a strange and confusing prose, like a puzzle to be solved. Alicia had finally settled down with researching along with the others. Sally hadn't commented when she found Darrell’s exercise books, filled with her nonsensical ramblings on the table alongside the other books they were using.

“Is Rupert up there tonight?”, Alicia asked as Sally closed the door of the cottage behind herself.

“Until two in the morning, then Matron is taking over again”, Sally replied as she hung her coat over the back of one of the chairs and then sat down. She frowned at one of the open books on the table and turned it towards herself,

“What’s that?”, she tapped at a sketch of human bicep with a strange mark on it, like a scar from a wound.

“Not sure, that one’s in Greek and the writing’s too faded in places to read it”, Alicia replied and she turned the page as demonstration where water damage had faded nearly half of the text, “I’m not even sure how much of it is useful - it’s some kind of diary the Council sent over. The first ten pages were soup recipes and I’ve only found two vague references to the Conduit. Why?”

“Looks like one of the injuries I woke up with after my first full moon”, Sally replied and she regretted saying anything when Alicia twitched in a very un-Alicia like way. It was somewhat difficult to know what to say whenever they touched on that night, _‘Sorry I tried to rip your throat out with my teeth’,_ didn’t quite seem enough.

“I’m not convinced that these are all nonsense by the way”, Alicia said, and she put her hand on top of the exercise books, “Granted I can’t read the Greek, and the Latin’s a pig to plough through, but some sections make sense”.

Sally didn’t want to look at more evidence of Darrell’s declining mental health, but at Alicia’s nod, she took the book and slowly read over the paragraph that Alicia tapped,

“For casting it out does not spell the end, the demon will simply move to another host with willingness or proximity and chaos will reignite”, Sally read, and a cold shiver ran down her spine. She pushed the exercise book back towards Alicia.

“I think _that_ is about the Conduit”, Alicia said, “Remember, Darrell read far more than any of the rest of us did about it, she was the one who caught the mistranslation. What if this is her trying to get that information out of her head?”.

“Alicia…”, Sally couldn’t do this now, but Alicia interrupted her.

“I know it’s a long shot and you’re right, there’s sections of incomprehensible ramblings that don’t make sense in any language but what if I’m right?”, Alicia asked. Sally closed her eyes for a moment and then pulled the second exercise book out from the pile,

“Alright”, she said, and they settled down to read.

A frantic knock at the door forty minutes later broke their concentration and the girls shared a cautious look before Sally frowned and said, “It’s Rupert”.

Alicia opened the door and Rupert barrelled in, “Is she down here?”

“Who?”, Alicia pushed the door shut behind him.

“Who? Darrell! Who else would I be bloody looking for?”, Rupert asked.

“She’s...she was with you”, Alicia looked just as frantic as Rupert now and Sally got to her feet as the realisation dawned on her.

“I was away for a minute, no longer”, Rupert paced as he spoke, “She couldn’t go past me, I was in the sodding entrance to the San”.

“You’ve lost her?”, and there was a strange sensation in Sally’s chest as she spoke, as though a string holding something back had snapped. A hot rage began to seep through her chest and down her arms as she struggled to keep her breathing steady.

“She couldn’t have…”, Rupert started.

“Sally”, Alicia placed one hand on Sally’s shoulder and pushed her back, Sally hadn’t even noticed that she had stepped towards him.

“It was only for a minute”, Rupert repeated, his voice softer and deflated.

“We’ll find her, I need you to settle down”, Alicia said, “Do that thing you do to calm Darrell down when she gets angry”. And Sally wished it was as simple as all that because even _if_ she weren’t fighting against a supernatural source of rage, she didn’t really know what it was she did that soothed Darrell’s temper.

“She needs you to stay calm and even-headed right now, focus on that”, Alicia said and that seemed to do the trick. Sally forced the anger back until all it felt like was a small hot spark buried deep in her chest.

“I called Marie up, she’s waiting outside the room to make sure no-one goes in or out”, Rupert explained as they left the cottage and made their way back up towards the San. Rain had started to drizzle in a soft haze and Sally realised she had forgotten to pick her coat up.

“You’ll be able to track her”, Alicia said to Sally as they took the back steps to minimise their chances of bumping into anyone and Sally started to nod and then froze. For a moment, something grabbed at her senses and she looked around for the source, losing it before she could truly focus on it.

Then another trace brushed at her and she turned around, going back down the stairs despite Alicia’s protests. She took the long corridor that eventually led to the back door that Bill had used to sneak out to the stables in the Third Form and came to a stop as she nearly collided with Darrell.

Neither of them said anything for what seemed like forever. There was that look again, just like on the train, as if Darrell had no idea who she was; Sally thought she would never get the pain of that look out of her mind. Then, just as quickly as before, the look was gone and replaced with confusion.

“Sally?”

Alicia and Rupert arrived behind Sally and Darrell looked all the more confused as she glanced down at herself, at her clothes covered in a soft brush of rain, and her socks which were soaked and muddy.

Sally was ashamed to admit she jumped when Darrell grabbed her arm and stared intently at the contact as if to work out if this was real. Then she turned her hands around and Sally watched as her lips moved as she counted her fingers.

“Why am I out of the San?”, Darrell asked eventually, seemingly satisfied that this was real, though Sally was beginning to wonder if she had fallen asleep down in the cottage and this was a manifestation of her own mental exhaustion.

“Let’s get you back up there while we figure that out”, Rupert suggested and he led the way. Silence hung between them all, no-one quite sure what to say. Alicia nudged Sally and nodded to Darrell’s legs, she was walking with a profound limp.

Marie looked as bewildered, for just a second, as they all felt but quickly ushered them inside and back into Darrell’s room, then left to retrieve Matron. When Matron returned, she checked Darrell over thoroughly and had her get changed back into dry clothes between various statements of disbelief. Rupert and Marie stepped out but Alicia and Sally insisted on staying, just turned their back as they stood at the window to offer Darrell a little bit of privacy. Alicia ran her hand over the windowsill then held her palm up and looked pointedly as Sally. Her hand was wet.

“She couldn’t…”, Sally murmured as she checked the lock on the window. It had been broken. Alicia nodded to the door and they stepped outside with a quick reassurance that they would be back in just a moment.

“The window’s broken”, Alicia said, keeping her voice low to avoid waking anyone else in the San.

“She can’t have climbed out surely”, Marie looked troubled and that was more than enough for Sally’s own anxiety to start climbing.

“She’s limping, badly”, Alicia added, “and we know she’s been outside”.

Sally felt threads start to pull together in her mind, at first in a frustratingly slow curl before they began to twist together faster, filling her with an overwhelming sense…

The door flew open as the bedside chair crashed through it and then they head Darrell shouting. Sally was through the door first and past Matron, who was steadying herself against the wall.

She couldn’t hear what Darrell was shouting...screaming...over and over; she wasn’t even sure it was in English but there was an uncontrollable terror to it that forced her into action. As Darrell lifted her hands and slammed her fists into the side of her head, Sally grabbed her and pinned her arms back at her side. Her head felt like it was going to explode from the onslaught of utter terror coming off her friend and she struggled against Darrell’s efforts to break free.

“Get her on the bed”, Marie ordered and in a second, Alicia was there as well. Between them them managed to get Darrell onto the bed and pinned down. Sally hated to thinking of the bruises they would be leaving with the force of their grip.

Matron, still pale and shaking, bustled up to the bed with a needle in her hand.

“Sedative”, she explained when Alicia looked at her, and Darrell fought against their hold even harder.

“No, no”, they could understand her now, “Please, if you do that it’s going to come back and I might not be able to make it go away this time”.

“I’m sorry Darrell”, Matron soothed as she carefully found a vein on Darrell’s left arm, “it’s going to be okay”.

“No, please don’t. Don’t let her do this”, Darrell begged and Sally had to close her eyes as Matron put the needle in. A few seconds past and Darrell stopped fighting so Sally loosened her grip and opened her eyes.

Darrell stared up at the ceiling above them, a strange hue in her eyes as her breathing slowed down with the sedation. The first flicker Sally was certain she had imagined but then it came back.

Darrell’s eyes changed to the crimson of the Conduit just before they closed and the mental threads that Sally had been just about to grasp at earlier tied themselves together and the realisation nearly sent her crumbling to her knees.

“Oh dear God”, Rupert whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the trickiest chapter to write because I had this gnawing frustration that I wasn't quite getting it across in the right way - particularly in handling the topics of mental illness and demonic possession co-existing. I hope by the end of chapter 12 the way I have written it will be as I hoped it would be, but I may need to fiddle with it.


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

_Rupert_

* * *

Once they had managed to move her down to the cottage, Rupert had offered to stay with Darrell in the back room until she regained full coherency. He thought it might be a touch easier for him than the others, if only because he hadn’t known Darrell anywhere near as long.

The memories it evoked, the pain of Randall’s death, made him wonder if that assumption had been sorely misguided.

They didn’t have much time, so the others were busy pouring over the rest of the books in the front of the cottage, racing against an unknown countdown. The other girls in the San had heard the commotion but Marie and Elizabeth had handled that, the seriousness of the matter causing Marie to once again go against all her morals and change yet more girls’ memories. Rupert had seen the dilemma in her eyes as she begged Elizabeth to call her if any of them began to behave peculiarly when they awoke.

Human minds just weren’t meant to be toyed with in that way.

Still, even with the little time that bought them, Felicity or her parents would surely want to visit Darrell and they might be able to delay it for a day but any longer and suspicions would arise. Then the Rivers would be back, demanding explanations.

There would be no possible way of explaining why their daughter was chained up in some quaint little cottage filled with books about demons, vampires and magic.

Rupert tensed as Darrell moved and he patted the tranquiliser beside him, hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Tired arms tugged at chains as Darrell came around from the sedative, and then the panic set in.

Rupert felt awful for feeling relieved but it meant that he didn’t have the Conduit sat opposite him.

“It’s alright”, he said and Darrell jumped, “I’m sorry about all this but we couldn’t take the chance”.

“It was real wasn’t it?”, Darrell asked and Rupert moved a little closer to give her a drink of water, tilting the glass carefully. He hesitated and then sat down beside her rather than moving back to his chair. The stone chilled his skin, even through jeans.

“It was”, Rupert confirmed.

“I had hoped that maybe it was all just trauma, that I really was having hallucinations and delusions and that it would all just go away with the tablets”, Darrell admitted. She sounded far away somehow, as though her words faded just that bit too quick.

“It marked you the night it took you?”, Rupert asked and Darrell shrugged.

“It must have, I don’t remember much about that night”, Darrell said, “apart from the torture. That part’s crystal clear. It kept telling me afterwards that I had agreed, that I had chosen”. Rupert offered her more water and watched as a slight red glow reflected in the water’s surface. Darrell must have seen something change on his face.

“How long do you think I have until it takes over completely?”, Darrell asked and Rupert just shook his head. They had no way of knowing. They had killed so many of its followers in the last few weeks, the super vampires linked to the Conduit by supernatural means, each one fueling its strength evidenced by the power he flexed over Darrell’s mind. If only they had known…

“I tried to tell you all so many times but every time I had a chance, I just seemed to lose time”, Darrell said, “I’d find myself in places I hadn’t meant to go with odd injuries”.

“We missed all of that”, Rupert and he put his hand over Darrell’s, “I am truly sorry”.

“Don’t let them be involved...please?”, Darrell asked suddenly and Rupert must have looked as confused as he felt because she clarified, “I know the Conduit will win eventually, it was always going to even with everything I was doing, the sedation probably only sped things up. I know that you will have to destroy it before it takes full control and I know that means I…”. Darrell blinked away tears and took a few moments to steady herself.

“Don’t let Sally or Alicia have to do it, please”.

“I promise”, Rupert gripped her hand a little tighter and they sat there in silence for a long time.

 

 

 

* * *

_Sally  
_

* * *

 

 

“Anything?”, Alicia asked as she dropped onto the chair beside Sally.

“No - I keep thinking there’s _something_ there but so much of the writing is just incoherent jibberish”, Sally held out the notebook to Marie. Marie moved the candles to cast more light over the notebook's pages.

“You were right, you can tell when Darrell’s in control but even then it’s like something’s stopping her”, Sally explained.

“I don’t understand why she did it”, Alicia said eventually, “She wasn’t the closest person to the Conduit so she must have agreed to be his host. It doesn’t make any sense”.

“I don’t know Alicia”, and Sally knew her voice was sharp, sharper than she meant for it to be.

“Whatever are you talking about?”, Marie asked and Alicia pulled the notebook with the passage they had read earlier that night towards herself and pointed it out to Marie.

“Berenger writes a similar thing in his book, about how the Conduit can move hosts”, Alicia added as Marie read, “but none of this makes sense because I was the closest to the Conduit when its host was destroyed, wouldn’t it have made more sense for it to just let me kill it and then it would have…”. Alicia trailed off and she looked visibly shaken as the thought played out.

“Why didn’t it just move to me?”, Alicia asked.

“Pass me that, please”, Marie gestured to the diary sent over by the Council and began to read that, “Now you’ve said that I’m sure I read...here…”. It was her turn to point out writing, on the same page Sally had asked about earlier.

“I didn’t quite understand it when I first read it but here”, Marie translated the Greek outloud for them, “movement to nearby form occurs when the demon’s control is complete, otherwise permission must be etched on the skin of the form. It’s clunky but I believe this says the Conduit can only move to the nearest host when it’s at full strength. We took that away when we cast our spell”.

“Do you think…”, Alicia’s voice trailed off for a moment, and there was a haunted look on her face, “Did Darrell agree to host the Conduit because she thought one of us would be possessed otherwise? She wouldn't have known about this”.

“That does sound rather more like Darrell if we’re honest”, Marie agreed, “the Conduit engineered that whole evening don’t forget from splitting us apart, to my capture, Darrell’s kidnapping... this is not a creature to underestimate”.

“Not us, me”, Sally felt sick to her stomach as she spoke, “she thought I would be possessed”, and she pointed to the same sketch from earlier, “she saw that on my side, the day after I turned… We thought maybe it was something to do with the werewolf transformation but then it faded so quickly that we decided it must have just been another injury I picked up”.

Sally’s chest ached as she wrestled under the realisation that Darrell had done this for her. She didn’t know if she wanted to cry or throw something.

“She knew enough, even without all of these other books, that the Conduit would have been able to manipulate her right to where he wanted her”, Marie let the notebook fall shut.

“But why her?”, Alicia asked.

“Time - look how long it has taken for us to even get to knowing this, look at how this has played out”, Marie said, “it need time to get back to full power and unless we take action soon, it will get there”.

“How do we stop it then?”, Alicia asked.

“You don’t”, Rupert’s voice interrupted them from the door and Sally felt cold at the look that passed between Marie and Rupert.

“What do you mean? We don’t just leave her possessed by…”, and Alicia reached the same realisation that Sally did, “No”.

“Alicia…”, Rupert started as he walked towards her but Alicia just got up and repeated herself louder.

“No”, she pushed the chair back under the table with such force that it shunted the table a good few inches, “There must be another way to defeat it”.

“We’re running out of time Alicia, this is what…”, Marie got up and put herself between Alicia and Rupert.

“We can save her”, Alicia protested, almost jabbing Marie as she gestured, “there has to be a way, and how do you even know that it hasn’t swindled someone else into accepting the mark? You don’t”.

“We have records going back hundreds of years”, Marie put her hands on Alicia’s shoulders, “that show us why we can’t let the Conduit get to full power again, and Darrell won’t hold out for much longer. Once it takes over, she will be gone anyway”.

“This is the part that hurts the most”, Rupert said, “these decisions, these big moments. And you’re not ready for it, which is why you need to go back to Malory Towers”.

Sally shook her head and got up to walk into the back room, not able to listen to any of it any longer. Rupert moved to stop her and she finally felt her self-control snap. She grabbed the front of Rupert’s shirt and slammed him against the nearest wall, lifted him by his clothes until he was a foot off the floor. Dark rage flooded her veins, her vision, her thoughts and she trembled with the effort of keeping it from overwhelming her.

“If either of you lay a hand on her…”, the words came out in a growl.

“Stop”, Marie grabbed Sally by the wrist and all at once it was like she returned to her senses. She let go of Rupert and he stumbled against the wall. An apology sat on the tip of her tongue but she held it back, not ready to utter it when - deep down - she wasn’t sorry.

The room practically crackled with anger ready to ignite and it was Marie who finally broke the silence,

“How long?”, she asked Rupert and when he shook his head she added, “best guess”.

“A day, maybe two”, he said, “she’s fighting hard but...she’s just a kid and she’s so tired already”. Marie nodded and turned back to face Sally and Alicia,

“We will wait, as long as we can”, she said and now that Sally looked closer she could see the pain on Marie’s face at the act that would fall to her to complete soon, “but if I have to make that decision, to save the lives of thousands, I will”.

Marie turned to help Rupert stand straight and Sally did feel a flash of guilt when he winced.

“We will step out to give you time with Darrell, please do not unchain her”, Marie said and her and Rupert stepped out and left the room in silence.

“They want us to use this time to say goodbye”, Sally steadied her gaze on Alicia who nodded, “Is that...what we’re doing?”, and Alicia shook her head that time.

“Like hell we are”, and she snatched the notebooks off the table and followed Sally into the back room.


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

_Darrell_

* * *

 

 

 _“They're scared of you. Can you sense it?”_ , Darrell shook her head and looked for something to count in the back room and when she couldn't find anything, she closed her eyes and tried to pull through some of her memories. She didn't know why counting worked in the battle between consciousness and possession, but it had served her well so far.

 _“That won't work forever you know, every time you fall asleep you let me in a little bit more”_ , and it was the same thing it said every single time.

Darrell wanted to respond to it, to shut down it's whispers with a single sharp comment, but she had already learnt that interaction only sped up the process. So she started there. The Conduit had said the same thing nine times now, before this the last time it said it was the San just before she was sedated. Her arms tensed in the chains but she kept going, there were eight girls in the San including her that night.

 _“You keep a little part of you though, when I take over”_ , words wisped through behind her thoughts and she focused even harder, her whole body shaking with her concentration.

 _“You'll get to watch when I kill them”,_ her heart pounded as it just kept speaking, _“I just haven't decided whether to kill your sister or the little werewolf first…”._

Darrell threw her whole body back against the wall just to get everything to stop for a moment. The pain reverberated through her and she did it again. She knew, somewhere in her conscious that she was hurting herself, that she was shouting nonsensical things but it was like she was watching herself do it from afar.

When arms went around her and stopped her throwing herself for a third time, Darrell’s first instinct was to fight harder but she tensed to stop herself doing that and forced her eyes open. Everything was tinged with crimson and there was a flicker of fear in her best friend's eyes for just a moment.

 _“It's even now, she's as terrified as you as you are of her”_ , and she didn't know if those words came from the Conduit or her own mind.

But even if Sally was terrified of her, she wasn’t moving away. She leant her head against Darrell’s shoulder as she sat beside her on the floor and Darrell counted to the rhythm of her breathing. The crimson hue faded away.

“I made a mess of this all”, Darrell said, once she finally found her voice, “I'm sorry”.

“Don't apologise”, and Sally lifted her head, “because the next thing will be you try to say goodbye and I'm not saying goodbye to you”.

“You might miss your chance if you don't”, Darrell said, even though the conviction in Sally's voice was so strong that she wanted to believe her.

“We'll rip the bloody thing out ourselves if we have to”, Alicia sat down in front of Darrell and dropped books on the floor. Darrell pulled her hands, and the attached chains, away as soon as she saw Alicia had the key.

“No, don't do that”, she said, “do not unlock me. You have no idea what I'm capable of with this thing in my head”. Alicia visibly hesitated and then pocketed the key.

“Where are Miss Potts and Mr Giles?”, Darrell moved to get some slack in the chains on her wrists.

“Doesn't matter”, Alicia replied, “comes down to it, it's on us to handle this. No Watchers, no Council, no-one. Just us. We need your help”.

Darrell closed her eyes for a beat and quickly opened them again as images of a church, lit in the warm glow of candle light illuminated in her mind.

“What can I do?”, she asked. Sally shifted beside her to give her some more space.

“We've translated bits and pieces but I need you to point us to sections we've missed”, and Alicia dove in to relaying sections from all of Darrell’s notebooks that they had discovered. It all started to melt together and Darrell felt all the worse for not being able to point them to something useful.

 _“It was impressive, using those books. Pity it didn't help in the end”,_ it was back. Outbursts like the one earlier only forced it into dormancy for a short time and Darrell didn't think that her friends would let her start hitting herself again to get it to go away.

“That's all we've translated that seems to make sense”, Alicia said and something started to uncurl in the back of Darrell’s thoughts, something she couldn't quite reach. She closed her eyes again and this time didn't push away the images of the church that danced in front of her. She tried to let it walk her through whatever it was that was struggling at the edges of her memory.

“There should…”, and the words stuck in her mouth as the church disappeared and was replaced with darkness for just a moment. Then _that_ night flickered into view, her being dragged into that room by the vampires…

“No, no”, she pulled herself out of the images and opened her eyes, tried to blink away the onslaught of crimson in her vision.

“It's okay”, Alicia said, holding her hands up, “I didn’t mean to push…”

“This is what happens”, Darrell let her head fall back against the wall, “whenever I try to say something of importance, I lose myself”.

  


 

* * *

_Sally_

* * *

 

 

They had left Darrell alone for a few minutes, or at least alone in the sense that they weren't right there with her. Sally was still standing so she could see her in case anything happened.

“There's something”, Alicia paced the room as she spoke, “there has to be or it wouldn't be blocking her like this”.

“It could be toying with us”, Sally said, though she wanted to believe that there was something they could aim for, “could be there's nothing and it's just making the pain all that much worse for us all”.

“If you give up as well…”

“I won't”, Sally cut her off, “I would never give up on her, I'm just voicing the possibility.”

Alicia sat on the edge of the table, “We need _something_ before they get back”.

“I don't know where else to look Alicia, we've read all the…”, and Sally froze as a thought came to mind, “wait”. She didn't explain herself as she walked over and began to rummage through the books on the table, then moved over to the desk and searched that as well, eventually finding an exercise book with blank pages.

“It takes back control every time she tries to speak, but she managed to write”, Sally explained, “I know that was when she was more coherent but…”.

“The options we're left with, I'd be willing to try anything”, Alicia was already on her way to the back room.

Sally crouched beside Darrell and gently nudged her. It took a few moments for her friend to respond, but Sally had no idea if that was the demon or the residual effects of the recent sedation.

“Can you write? Like you did before?”, Sally asked. Darrell hesitated but finally nodded and pulled her knees up so Sally could place the notebook against them, then took the pen. She could only just reach to write and she once again waved away Alicia's offer to unchain her. Sally's heart sank as the first two paragraphs were a scrambled mixture of nonsensical English and Latin. She felt Alicia watching her and she shook her head - a tiny movement she hoped Darrell wouldn't see.

Then something changed. Darrell’s grip on the pen got tighter as she wrote and Sally watched as lines that made some kind of sense were written. Alicia must have sensed it too because she moved a little closer.

Darrell passed the pen to her other hand and Sally caught the flicker of crimson in her eyes just a second too late. Darrell fist tightened around the pen and then slammed the pen as hard as she could into her dominant hand, forcing it right through the back of her hand and out her palm.

“Jesus Christ”, Alicia leapt backwards at the vicious self injury.

Sally threw the notebook out of reach before it could be destroyed and grabbed Darrell’s wrists to stop her… To stop it from hurting her again. It was deeply unsettling, the way Darrell just stared into nothingness as though she hadn't just mutilated herself and Sally swallowed the lump in her throat. Then the nothingness faded and Darrell looked up as though she couldn't understand what Sally was doing. Sally could only nod towards her hand, where blood was starting to drip from the wound.

“You can't feel that?”, Alicia's voice shook a little. Darrell shook her head.

“Can you get some cloth from the front”, Sally asked Alicia and Alicia did as she was asked without comment. As soon as she got back, Sally wrapped her own hand around the end of the pen.

“It doesn't hurt?”, she confirmed and Darrell shook her head again. Sally tightened her grip and slowly pulled the pen back up and out of Darrell’s hand, thanking whatever force had meant that the pen hadn't smashed or broken into shards. Alicia wrapped the hand immediately in more cloth than was really needed and tied it tightly.

“That's why you can't unlock me”, Darrell sounded completely drained, “I'm sorry…”

Sally reassured her, though the words sounded so fake even to her own ears that she hated herself for speaking them.

“Can I just be by myself for a bit?”, Darrell asked and they, reluctantly, agreed.

Alicia immediately poured over the paragraphs in the exercise book once they were at the table. Her lips moved as she read and her brow furrowed in concentration. She got to the end and then went back and reread something.

“Since all we've got is long shots…”, Alicia asked hesitantly and Sally just waved for her to go on, “They don't quite make sense, even the ones where she's in control but she mentions the same thing twice in these sentences. That can't be coincidence right?”

“I don't know”, Sally sighed, why did it feel like that was the only thing she had to offer in all of this, a seemingly endless loop of not knowing.

“Turn your eyes to the demon, Acathla and see how they plan to end this all. How I turn to stone. And then down here”, Alicia read and then scanned down, “Acathla shows the way, the answer, the demise… have you read anything about Acathla”.

“No but…”, Sally retrieved a huge book from Marie's bookcase and brought it back to the table, “it's probably in here if it's real”.

There wasn't any sort of contents page or index in these ancient books as they were added to as the authors learnt about new events in the supernatural world. It was a good thing that someone involved in the book wanted to show off their calligraphy with decorative titles for each demon's section. Still it seemed to take forever, and three in the morning started to approach. Sally stepped in to check on Darrell once during the search. Darrell had fallen asleep and Sally didn't have the heart to waken her, reasoning that an extra half an hour couldn't do anymore damage to her willpower than the sedation.

“There”, Sally put her hand on the book as Alicia flicked through the pages, “Acathla…”. She read over Alicia's shoulder with a frown.

“This has nothing to do with the Conduit”, Alicia groaned.

“No…but look”, there was a light flutter as Sally reread the words to make sure she had understood them correctly, “Acathla, being a demon so powerful it could swallow the world, could only be defeated by a sword blessed by one of great virtue. It says here a virtuous Knight defeated Acathla centuries ago, turned the demon to stone”.

“That's great, think he's still alive?”, the sarcastic defense mechanism grated on Sally.

“Would you let me finish? It says here that he blessed another sword which he bestowed to one who slays the darkness. That’s got to be a Slayer. This sword could…”, Sally didn't dare finish the statement.

“If it stopped one demon, it could stop another and if it was given to a Slayer it probably ended up at the Watcher’s Council”, Alicia replied.

“See how _they_ plan to end it all. How I turn to stone”, Sally repeated the words from Darrell’s notebook, “do you think that Rupert and Marie…”

“Already know?”, Alicia finished her sentence, “I mean they would know this, all of this. It’s probably part of the history exam for Watcher’s School or something”, and Sally let the snide comment go because there was energy back in Alicia’s voice.

“That’s why they left us”, Sally whispered, “Marie, she looked broken - as though she was having to make a horrible decision, and she was. The incantation was supposed to work and it didn’t so now they have one last option...”.

“They’re going to kill her with the sword”, and the energy was gone again.

  


 

* * *

 

_Alicia_

* * *

 

 

In a few hours the sun would start to rise, a new day would start, and they were no closer to a solution. Alicia needed to do something other than pace and read through books but there was nothing she could do.

“Even if we get that sword”, and they had discussed how they might intercept the sword which was almost certainly being driven down or sent down via overnight train from the Council headquarters, “there’s no way to entomb the Conduit with it without killing Darrell”.

Alicia knew she was repeating things they had already been over but she couldn’t just sit and think in silence like Sally was doing. She wanted to grab her and shake her and demand that whatever she was pondering could be said aloud because right now it looked like she was just letting time pass until her friend died.

“Just say something!”, Alicia snapped after she watched Sally for another minute, “anything to let me know that you're…”

“The host will be killed”, Sally sounded quite unlike herself, darkness underlining her voice that made Alicia regret losing her temper, “the host doesn’t need to be Darrell”.

It was as though the air chilled around them, and Alicia took a sharp breath as she unpicked the words.

“What are you suggesting?”, Alicia lowered her voice with a cautious glance into the back room, Darrell was awake but she didn’t seem to hear them. Alicia sat down and moved her chair closer to Sally.

“If the Conduit is full strength and the body it’s inhabiting dies”, the words weren’t any less unsettling for being spoken in a softer volume, “it will jump to the nearest body _if_ it hasn’t marked someone else. I don’t believe it has or it wouldn’t have tried to hide what Darrell was writing in there.”

“I don’t like where you’re taking me Sally”, Alicia admitted, and Sally waved at her to lower her voice,

“Evil wins because it goes to lengths that good would never think of. The Conduit anticipates us doing things a certain way. It will certainly have anticipated us stalling Marie and Rupert”, Sally continued, “it knows it has time to grow stronger while we argue over what to do, each minute we lose more of her. It won’t expect us to…”, and Alicia was relieved to finally see a wobble of emotion before Sally finished, “to kill her without the sword”.

“Do you not see the glaring flaw in this plan to save her?”, Alicia asked.

“She’s young and generally healthy, and if we stack the odds in our favour with vampire blood, we could bring her back from a drowning”.

All Alicia could do was stare. How could this be the same girl she had spent the last five years teasing and mocking for her staid and proper behaviour? How could someone so plain-natured and unassuming be standing there and laying out a plan like this?

“Vampire blood?”, Alicia choked.

“You heard what Darrell said, it can bring humans back from the brink of death”, Sally whispered, “she drowns, it jumps to another body, we use the sword”.

"And if it doesn't work?", Alicia asked.

"Then at least she won't spend her eternity as a stone entombing a demon", Sally replied, "she doesn't deserve that either".

“Where do you propose we get this other body?”, Alicia asked, “you’re talking about…”, She couldn’t finish her sentence. Sally looked over her shoulder to where Darrell was and when she looked back there was a certainty in her eyes that made Alicia shudder.

“I’ll just go ahead without you”, Sally said.

They sat there for what seemed like an age, and just as Alicia was about to say something, the door to the cottage opened.

“Oh good, you’re still here”, knowing what they knew, Rupert’s words felt insincere, “Marie suggested that at least one of you go back to school, for the sake of keeping things as normal as possible and I’ll stay with the other”.

“I’m not leaving”, Sally said immediately and Alicia pushed herself back from the table, almost grateful that they had been interrupted.

“Makes more sense this way, that you would be excused to visit Darrell I mean”, Rupert mused as Alicia walked towards the door, “How is…”

Alicia spun around at the sound of flesh being hit, just in time to see Rupert hit the floor of the cottage. Sally shook her head, the knuckles cracked with the force of her blow, and bent down to check his pulse.

“Fine”, and she lifted him under the arms to drag him into the back room and sat him upright on the sofa, bound his hands and legs tightly with the first material she could find. She glanced at Darrell who hadn’t even responded to the ruckus, then turned back to Alicia,

“Come on. She can’t hold out much longer”.


	11. Chapter 11

_ Alicia _

 

Alicia's hands were shaking. 

For all that she had done, for all she imagined she might do, nothing could have prepared her for going to these lengths. She could have refused, and a part of her brain kept screaming for her to back out now because this wasn't what the good side were meant to do. How was she supposed to steal from Marie, especially knowing what Sally was going to do with the sword?

Part of her wondered if Sally's plan was to take Darrell’s place. When they divided up the duties and Sally quite calmly informed Alicia that if she stole the sword, Sally would take care of the rest, Alicia had asked her again  _ who _ she intended take Darrell’s place. Sally hadn't met her eye as she told her that she didn't need to know. Self-sacrifice though seemed more of the type of plan the old Sally Hope would have carried out, and Alicia didn't know who Sally was becoming now but it was a far cry from that girl. 

Alicia picked up the pace as she neared school, images of Rupert hitting the floor played over and over in her head. She had insisted on locking the cage on Darrell, just in case the Conduit took it's chance while they were gone. It was meant to make her feel better about leaving Rupert there defenseless but it did nothing of the sort.

Marie's light was on. It was amazing no-one else ever noticed the overnight comings and goings around them, but then again it was amazing, in an awful sort of way, that a massacre nearby had been so skillfully deflected as a tragic fire that whipped through a quaint little town… 

Alicia scolded herself for putting it off and she quickly slipped inside the back door of the Tower. She took the steps two at a time and stopped on the floor below Miss Pott’s office. The teacher's staff room sat directly below it and while the lock would take nothing more than a shoulder to break, Alicia stopped and picked the lock instead. It took her four times, each time her heart beating a little louder until it seemed like it was pounding in her head. She had managed to do it first time after Roger had shown her how to, and she wondered what he would think if he knew that his sister was using those skills for something so much worse than mischief and mayhem. 

It finally opened and she stepped inside, easing the door shut behind her. She could hear footsteps overhead as she held her breath as she opened the window. It had seemed so much easier when she planned it from the safety of the ground but as she stepped onto the window ledge, she just hoped that she wouldn't shake herself off of it. She could hear Marie talking above her but no-one else's voice. She listened, her breathing sounding so loud to herself that at any moment she expected Marie to push the window open, look down and ask her what on earth she was doing. 

The window above her was open, courtesy of Rupert’s smoking and Alicia wished that they hadn't been quite so predictable because if there were more barriers perhaps she could…

The sound of Marie's door opening and closing interrupted her and Alicia took a deep breath as she got a foothold on the outside wall and pushed herself up. Her fingertips caught the windowsill in a solid grip and she struggled to pull herself up and yank open the window at the same time. She dropped softly through into the room and sat for a moment to catch her breath. Only for a moment though, because Alicia did not intend to be in the room when Marie returned, one way or another. She wondered if she had it in her to do what Sally had done with Rupert, and in a moment of desperation knock her Watcher unconscious. She shuddered at the thought. 

To escape the thoughts that seemed so intent on pulling her down, Alicia crept forward and snatched the room key from the desk. Then she finally stood and looked at the sword. She supposed she had expected something grander, something with an ornate decor that betrayed the secret of it's power in some way, but it looked rather plain. She wondered if that was the point, to hide it in plain sight and all that. She lifted it from table and held it. Ice ran through her veins as she thought about Marie using it on Darrell and unwanted images flashed in her mind’s eye. For a moment, she felt like she understood Sally's desperation. 

Then she heard footsteps in the hall and, sword in one hand, she pulled the window shut and locked it, then moved across to behind the door. Her other hand wrapped around the small fabric bag in her pocket, she had seen Marie make the sleeping charm so many times but she had  _ never _ thought she would resort to using it in this way. Footsteps came closer and closer, the handle turned and the door opened, Alicia shielded from view behind it. 

People on the side of good were predictable, that's what Sally had said. It was why she could have predicted Marie leaving her window open to air out the smell of smoke, it was why she could predict Marie staggering towards the table in disbelief as her mind quickly realised exactly what was missing, and it was why Marie could never have predicted they would have done this… 

Alicia slipped around the door behind Marie's back and hung the charm on the handle of the door. She closed it firmly behind her, locked it and uttered the words to activate the charm. She heard Marie call out in surprise and rush towards the door, felt the handle be tried beneath her hand and words called through to her. She couldn't understand them for the pounding in her head and it wasn't until the room on the other side of the door fell quiet, that she realised she was crying. She leant her head against the door, and silently begged for forgiveness before she took off down the corridor. 

  
  


_ Sally _

 

_ “Who exactly are you planning on taking Darrell’s place?” _

Sally wouldn’t have told Alicia anyway, but it made it much easier to not answer when she simply didn’t know. That part of the plan, if that’s what she could call this cobbled set of desperate actions, had been the only part she couldn’t answer, even to herself.

How did she choose someone to die?

She turned the page of the record book and held the torch higher so she could read down the log. What crime did someone have to commit before someone could justify ending their life? It wasn’t that long ago they used to use death as a punishment for crime in England, and they still executed people in America didn’t they? Sally was sure she remembered Darrell saying that once because she just knew lots of unconnected pieces of information from reading so much. Though Sally did sometimes wonder what sorts of books she got these pieces of information from. 

None of that helped though because she wasn’t reading a list of criminals who had left pain and misery in their wake, she had a list of people who stole from the local shop or who had had a bit of a punch-up down at the pub. All meticulously written down by one of the local police officers who occasionally cycled down to Malory Towers and checked in on them all.

Sally closed and eyes and massaged her temple. Getting the vampire blood had been simple by comparison, she could find them by scent easily enough and a vampire bled plenty when you tore their arm off at the elbow. She tapped the vial in her pocket to remind herself that she needed to stay focused.

She turned the page again and found a name she had seen before, flipped back a page and checked it against the previous crime. She kept going and found his name a page later as well.

This was desperation. Looking for patterns of behaviour to justify what she was about to do. She wondered if Darrell would ever forgive her for doing this? Because Darrell wouldn’t do this, not when she had stepped in and accepted a death sentence so that no-one else had to get hurt. Someone who gave their life so willingly for the people she loved wouldn’t ever understand this. Which was precisely how Sally could justify this to herself, because Darrell was a good person, even though she wouldn’t always think so herself, and she didn’t deserve to die.

And Sally wasn’t as good as her, which was why she could do this. 

The name came up a fourth time and Sally read the address alongside it and shut the book before she changed her mind. She slunk down the corridor of the small police station and out the back door. She pushed it shut but the first officer in would see the smashed handle and lock from the other end of the corridor. What was the point in hiding her tracks? Barely recovered from the attack of the Conduit, what exactly would they do over a broken door?

Sally kept the hood of her coat up as she moved through the darkness of the town and avoided the streetlights as much as she could. She found the road she needed and waited for a moment at the end of it. In half an hour, maybe less the first people would be up getting ready for work - those running paper rounds or delivering milk and then the likelihood that she would be able to drag a man through the streets unseen would fade to nothing. That was all the motivation she needed to find number seventeen.

 

_ Alicia _

“Took your bloody time”, Alicia hissed as Sally finally stepped through the door, and her follow-up words faded to nothing when she saw that Sally wasn’t alone. Sally deposited the body of a man on the floor and took a vial of what looked like blood out of her pocket and set it on the table. Alicia could only tell the man was alive from the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

“How did...who…”, Alicia stumbled over her words, all of this was becoming far too real and she just needed a moment to think about what they were doing.

“He made it easier by being so drunk he could barely walk”, Sally replied, and the cold monotone had to be a mask because Alicia couldn’t believe that anyone could be this heartless.

“We can’t do this…”, Alicia whispered.

“You can leave”, Sally said, “is that the sword?”.

Alicia nodded and stumbled over her words, “Is that all you have to say? You’re playing God with a stranger’s life for..for..”.

“No, I’m deciding to save her life and sacrifice him for her, there’s no God in this, in anything of this because if there was we wouldn’t have to do what we’re doing!”, and in a way Alicia was relieved to see some emotion finally return to Sally.

“Maybe there’s another way…”, Alicia said, though she knew as she said it that she was wishing for something that just wasn’t there.

“Maybe there is, and maybe if we had more time we could find a way to do this that didn’t involve me making this choice but we don’t have that time and I won’t let her die”, Sally leant on the table and glanced through the door to the back room, “You should take Rupert and leave, you did what I asked you to do. You don’t have to stay for this part”.

Alicia couldn’t decide if she was a coward for wanting to leave or a monster for wanting to stay and she wished that someone could just tell her what to do. Whatever choice she made, she would regret some part of it for the rest of her life.

“No”, she said eventually, “Let me get Rupert out of here, but then I’ll be back. We’ll finish this together”.

Sally nodded and picked up the sword and vial to take them through to the other room, “I'll sort out the rest”. 

 

_ Sally _

 

“Darrell? I need you to listen to me, to focus”, Sally shook her friend and was relieved that when Darrell stirred the eyes looking back at her were deep brown. 

“You came back”, Darrell’s words slurred together, “you went away”. 

“I'll always come back”, Sally brushed Darrell’s curls out of her face, her friend was cool to the touch. 

“Did you change your mind?”, Darrell winced as Sally helped her into a seated position, “about saying…”

“No, I haven't. I told you, I'm not saying goodbye”, Sally fumbled for the key in her pocket and then decided she would wait for Alicia before using it. 

“Never knew you had such a stubborn streak”, Darrell said, “I don't want you to have regrets”. 

“I…”, and Sally wanted to say that she wouldn't say goodbye because not only would that mean she was accepting that this might not work but that it would mean that she was accepting never seeing Darrell again. And for all the darkness in the world, Sally had to believe that there might be a place after this world where they would meet again, regardless of what happened. But that all sounded quite ridiculous and overly sentimental in her head and she had never really been able to put into words how she felt, not about Darrell. 

“I know”, was all Darrell said and that was enough, even if she didn't really know. 

She glanced up as Alicia stepped back inside the room and they shared a look before Alicia nodded. 

“Darrell, I need you to trust me okay, even if what I tell you to do sounds wrong okay?”, Sally said, “just, trust me”. At Darrell’s nod, Sally took the key out of her pocket and started to unlock the leg and wrist chains. She saw Darrell start to protest and then silence herself. 

“Come with us”, Sally helped Darrell to her feet and with Alicia's help guided her towards the bathroom. Though it hadn't been used for purpose for a good many years by the looks of it, it was functional enough once Sally had emptied it of clutter and filled it with water. The water was all bitter cold but that made little difference. They stopped outside, Sally didn't want Darrell to see and remember the sight of the man inside. 

“Let it win”, Sally said and Darrell just stared at her so she repeated, “let it win”. Darrell looked terrified and Sally thought she might refuse because this was asking an enormous leap of faith, but Darrell scanned her face and then closed her own eyes. Her shoulders slumped and her muscles relaxed for a few seconds and then her whole body jerked and her eyes opened. Deep dark crimson. 

“Now!”, and before it could get its bearings, they dragged the Conduit in Darrell’s body and forced it into the bath. It struggled bitterly but they had the element of surprise and Darrell’s body was still all too human for the Conduit to fight the effects of the water or them so soon after it gaining control. Sally forced herself to keep her eyes open even though she was certain she would have nightmares about it for years if not forever. 

People lost the strength to fight drowning after thirty or forty seconds, they lost consciousness shortly afterwards. Then they would need to pull away so neither of them became the Conduit’s host or they would be in far greater danger. 

The fight was going from Darrell’s body and after a few more week attempts, her hands fell into the water, then her body went slack. They held on for a few more seconds, just in case the Conduit was bluffing. 

“Come on”, Sally pulled Alicia to the door of the bathroom, putting themselves further away than Richard Austen, the man she had kidnapped and sentenced to this fate. Sally lifted the sword from the floor and held it in one hand. A minute went by in silence before it happened. 

Richard's eyes sprung open, the same dark red as Darrell’s had so recently been. His eyes fell upon the sword and before Sally had time to react, he had thrown himself towards her and knocked her off balance. They crashed into the main room and the sword fell from her grasp as the Conduit fought desperately for it's life. 

Alicia grabbed him by his shoulders and flung him off of Sally. Sally was on her feet in seconds and moved in time to dodge the punch thrown at her head. She ducked a second punch and snatched the sword up from the floor, turned it in her hand to get a proper grip. 

“You…”, she didn't give it time to speak. Her whole body crackled with an anger she had never felt before, not even during her transformation and she stepped in and swung the sword as hard as she could. 

The blade, so ordinary to look at, seemed to glow as it passed through flesh as though it were paper. Then light crept outwards from the wound as the top of Richard Austen’s body landed back on the bottom half. A burst of light blinded them for a second and Sally opened her eyes in time to see the two halves, entombed in stone, crash to the floor of the cottage. 

They had no time to pause and take stock though and Sally ran back into the bathroom to drag Darrell’s body from the bath. She felt Alicia's hands take some of the dead weight and they moved Darrell back into the main room where they had space to work. 

Five rescue breaths. Sally had been repeating that phrase in her head over and over. She counted as she started resuscitation, completing the five rescue breaths before she switched to chest compressions.

She counted those so loudly in her head that she thought her head might crack from thoughts alone. Then she did two more rescue breaths. 

“Pulse?”, she looked up at Alicia who checked. An action that must have only taken a second seemed to take minutes and then Alicia's eyes widened, 

“Yes, it's weak but…”

“How about breathing?”

Alicia lowered her face so she could listen, “I think so…”

“The blood”, Sally cut her off and Alicia fumbled to get the vial out of her pocket and the lid off. The blood looked almost black as Alicia tipped it, though the small amount that spattered on Darrell’s lips looked the same as human blood. 

The vial finished, they waited. Watched. A minute passed before Alicia nodded to confirm that Darrell’s pulse had strengthened. Then Darrell’s breathing grew stronger and Sally felt like she could breathe again as Darrell’s chest rose and fell, and as the deathly pallor began to fade into a tint of life.

“It… It worked…”, Sally looked up and saw that Alicia had tears on her cheeks, “it actually worked”. 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the 2018, 12 Days of Christmas challenge. Thanks for reading and see you again next year :)

* * *

 

_ Alicia _

* * *

 

 

Alicia wasn't sure how the two of them would make it through lessons. Supernatural or not, bodies needed sleep and after hiding the now-stone Conduit, taking Darrell back up to the San and unlocking Marie's office and returning the sword, wrapped in cloth, and hiding it behind the desk while Marie slept off the sleeping charm on her sofa, it had been time for the rest of the school to get up for the day.

Had they really accomplished everything they had in eight hours? It felt unreal, anticlimactic almost as they watched the rest of the school go on as usual around them. Though perhaps that was sleep deprivation clouding her mind. It just seemed as though something so big should have had an impact on more than just them, on more than just the five of them.

Marie and Rupert had arrived at breakfast late, with Rupert sporting a rather spectacular black eye, and Alicia hadn't been able to meet either of their gazes. She practically felt eyes burning into her but she steadfastly kept her head down and hoped that they wouldn’t approach her. Mercifully they didn’t and Matron had scurried in minutes later, whispered something in Marie's ear and they left together.

"Something's happened overnight, they look all flustered", Belinda nudged Irene and nodded towards the exiting head of North Tower. 

“Do you think it’s Darrell?”, Daphne asked, “maybe she’s had another episode”, and then blushed as Sally overheard her and glanced up. They had, so far, been quite careful to keep their questions about Darrell out of Sally’s earshot and the table descended back into uncomfortable silence.

There would be more whispers by the end of first lesson, and while their current topic of whispering was somewhat out of the norm, the fact that the rumour mill kept turning and no-one had the slightest clue of the guilty conscience sat amongst them made Alicia wonder how many other people harboured secrets in the hall. She glanced at Sally, who was somehow behaving the same way she always did. How did she do that after what they had done? 

Breakfast finished and first lesson went by just like every other Maths lesson, though Alicia knew she was unsettled and distracted. Usually able to avoid earning any sharp words now she was in the Fifth, she was called on three times by Miss James for fidgeting and daydreaming. If being called out wasn't embarrassing enough, the giggles she heard from back where Betty was sitting made her squirm as she sunk lower into her chair and chastised herself for her erratic behaviour.

Rather than go another lesson with the weight in her chest, Alicia ran up to Marie's office in the break, deciding the only way to stop her chest from aching was a full capitulation against the inevitable and confession without the expectation of forgiveness. She knocked and waited until she was summoned. Marie called for her to enter and, from the way her eyebrows raised, she had not been anticipating it being Alicia. The words Alicia had planned stuck deep in her throat, and she fought the suffocation of her guilt until she finally managed to choke out, 

"I'm sorry. For everything". 

 

 

 

* * *

_ Marie _

* * *

 

Marie had never in her entire time of teaching Alicia John's, heard an apology that hadn't been reluctant, defensive or downright forced from the young woman. She had certainly never seen guilt of the type that her Slayer wore across her face. 

When she had awoke on her sofa and pieced together what she did remember from the moments just before she collapsed onto it, she had quickly deduced that Alicia and Sally were almost certainly behind it. Her initial response had been outright anger, which soon faded to frustration and embarrassment. Just as she was finally meandering her way through to a point where she got herself to start thinking from the two girls’ point of view, Rupert had stormed in with a cracker of a black eye and she had been forced to spent the next twenty minutes calming him down.

“Sit down Alicia”, Marie said eventually and the girl practically crumpled into the chair opposite her.

“Darrell is looking better”, Marie said and Alicia’s entire face flushed as she inspected the wood on the desk with far more interest than it deserved, “she was still a little confused and half asleep when I went down but it seems a far cry from when I last saw her”.

“Will she be okay?”, and that that was Alicia’s first question made Marie soften her approach, just a little.

“Time will tell but at the moment we are hopeful, though she seems to be in quite a bit of pain with the injuries she has sustained”, Marie chose her words carefully, “we will be taking her back into hospital later today for a full check-up”. 

She let the following silence drag out before she asked, “Whose idea was it?”

“Does it matter?”, Alicia asked, and though Marie admired her efforts at loyalty, it told her all that she needed to know. It was a little surprising to see Alicia covering for Sally, and Marie wished it could have taken place under better circumstances.

“I suppose not, I presume you were both involved when it came down to it”, Marie conceded. 

“What will happen to me?”, Alicia asked, “Will...will the Watcher’s Council want to conduct a trial?”

“The Watcher’s Council care little more than to know that a problem they thought they might have to deal with has gone away”, Marie replied. Quentin Travers had almost seemed jovial when she informed him that matters had been resolved in an alternate matter and that she would be returning the sword to him that day. Though she knew he would do most anything to have an easier time of it, his lack of concern or interest posed a potentially bigger problem for her.

“But…”, and that was when Marie realised that Alicia wanted to take the blame, and was seeking punishment for what she had done.

“Alicia, I will hope that one day you and I can sit down and discuss what you and Sally have done”, Marie chose her words carefully, “but the fact is, it is done and you still have a duty to uphold. I won’t pretend to agree blindly with whatever you have done because I’m quite sure you would not have cast a sleeping charm on me if you felt that your actions were good. I hope I don’t have to tell you that should you ever do something like that to me again, I will be far less sympathetic or understanding”. Alicia nodded and Marie believed her.

“I didn’t know I was capable of...of making choices like that”, Alicia said.

“And that will be a punishment that shouldn’t be avoided, though I doubt you will try to”, Marie stood and walked around to Alicia’s side of the desk and sat on the edge of the table, “you will have to live with the consequences of your actions, even those you don’t know about yet”.

“That doesn’t seem enough”, Alicia replied.

“You won’t know that until you’ve lived in it for a while”, Marie said and she finally let her guard down just a moment and reached out to squeeze Alicia’s shoulder, startling the girl with the contact.

“You need to go back to class now. I would suggest you owe Rupert a long conversation later as well”, Marie hoped that she wasn’t about to cause a spark by sending Alicia to apologise to him as well, “I will let you know how Darrell gets on at the hospital”. She closed the sentence with a firmness that Alicia recognised as her being dismissed and her Slayer quickly left the room.

Marie tidied away her papers and made her way down to the San to accompany Darrell to the hospital. They had considered calling an ambulance but eventually Marie decided it would be better to drive Darrell in herself. The hospital staff last time had strapped Darrell to the bed for tests where there was no need to, all because of the - at the time suspected - psychosis diagnosis. Marie didn't want to put Darrell through more of that than was necessary and she suspected the paramedics would want to strap her down quite extensively. 

Matron had administered the strongest painkillers she could before Marie arrived and Darrell was quite unfocused and compliant, neither terms Marie would generally associate with her. It was also becoming increasingly apparent that she had sustained some quite serious harm while under the possession of the Conduit and asides from the puncture wound clear through her dominant hand, she had done a long of damage to one of her legs as well and needed both crutches and human support to reach the car. As Marie strapped her in, she felt enormous sympathy for the girl for being once again in a vehicle with Marie, bruised and bloodied by the supernatural. 

They drove in silence for a while and Marie wasn't sure at first if she had imagined it when Darrell asked, “Am I dead?”

“Not unless we are sharing the same afterlife”, Marie replied, and she pulled over to the side of the road and reached to put her hand on Darrell’s arm. 

“Wouldn't my brain try to protect me by making it seem real?”, and Marie couldn't start to imagine the turmoil inside Darrell, uncertain if she were alive or dead, conscious or unconscious. 

“Possibly”, Marie replied, “but it's the same uncertainty all of us need to deal with, none of us can truly prove that we are alive. Do you feel the same as before?”

“It's gone”, Darrell replied, “but it doesn't feel like before, before they took me and before all of this. I don't think it ever will”. 

Marie couldn't bring herself to say that Darrell was probably right. 

 

* * *

 

_ Sally _

* * *

 

 

“You're supposed to be at school”, Sally wasn't surprised to hear Marie's voice, only that it had taken the woman so long to get her on her own. Sally glanced at the hospital bed where Darrell was still unconscious after surgery, well… Almost on her own. 

“I'll be back in time for patrol, don't worry”. 

“That is amongst the least of my concerns”, Marie sat on the chair beside Sally. Sally wasn't about to talk first, so she focused on the warmth in her palm, where Darrell’s good hand lightly gripped hers. If she squeezed it, Darrell’s hand tightened just enough around hers to reassure her that her friend might just be okay. 

“You went to far greater lengths than I ever expected for her”, Marie said eventually, “I should perhaps have seen it sooner, what you would do to keep her safe”. 

“If you're expecting me to break down and get upset…”, Sally said. 

“How far exactly would you go to protect her?”, Marie asked. 

Sally kept her mouth shut, not wanting to be drawn in to a discussion about the morals of what Marie might have deduced that she had done. Marie was trying to prompt a reaction, to get something from her, and Sally knew that meant that Alicia had not told her what happened that evening. Sally certainly wasn't inclined to fill in the blanks for her, and she wasn't interested in a debate about the choices she had made. She knew that none of them - Alicia, Marie and Rupert - could see past the cold front she had put up, and that suited her just fine. They could see what they wanted.  


“Sally, it isn't healthy to keep this…”

“What would you have told her parents, or Felicity, or the rest of the school?”, Sally knew she was being cruel even as she spoke but if Marie insisted on trying to back her into a corner with words, Sally intended to fight back, “Did you know what you would do after you killed her and she turned to stone? I can't imagine you could have ever explained that. I suppose you could have used her mental health as an excuse, claimed she ran away from a hospital visit and just disappeared”.

When she looked at Marie, she did feel guilty for the flicker in the woman's eyes and Sally stopped herself from saying what else was on her mind. She had made her point.  


“I know what I did. I know I have to live with it”, Sally turned back to look at Darrell, “and I will”. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

_ Darrell _

* * *

 

 

“I'm okay Felicity”, Darrell let Felicity finish packing her suitcase, only because her sister fixed her with a look so sharp that she could only have learnt it from their mother. 

“You can barely stand and I think if you lose much more weight you might snap”, Felicity never clucked like this and Darrell watched as her little sister packed and repacked her case. 

“Fine, but I will be okay. You know that right?”, and from the way Felicity's bottom lip wobbled for just a moment and she looked away, Darrell decided that perhaps she didn't. 

“Come here, stop packing”, Darrell pulled Felicity to sit down beside her and hugged her little sister as right as she could without wincing from the pain of her broken ribs, “the others can help me with it when they come up anyway.”

“As if all of the other things weren't enough”, Felicity wiped away tears with the back of her hand, “Do you even remember how all this happened?”. Darrell shook her head, and was grateful that - at least in part - she was telling the truth. Her memories were fuzzy from around the time Sally had asked her to write in her exercise books onwards. Occasionally she would get a flash of a memory but she could never hold onto them long enough to examine them. 

“Daddy is fuming that the police can't find the driver”, Felicity said and Darrell could well believe it. She wasn't entirely sure of the story that they had concocted to cover up what really happened, but Darrell knew that it involved a car accident and being on her way to or from hospital. She had seen photos of a crashed car and the police had all taken the incident quite seriously when they tried to question her but she hadn't been able to offer any insight and once they had learnt about her diagnosis, they hadn't pushed much harder. 

“Is this how it felt?”, Felicity asked, “when I was sick I mean?”. 

Darrell nodded and a smaller hand grabbed hers tightly, “I know you don't like to talk about it”. 

“It hurts deep inside you because you know there's nothing you can do and it just…”. Darrell shook her head, unable to finish. 

The door to the dorms opened and Alicia stopped in the doorway, “Oh, sorry. I thought…”

“It's okay”, Felicity got up, “I need to go pack as well”, she slunk past Alicia and Sally and out of the door. 

“You look a lot better”, Alicia said eventually and she sat down on Sally's bed, facing Darrell. Sally sat down beside Darrell and brushed her thumb against Darrell’s elbow. 

“Then I look better than I feel”, Darrell replied. She glanced up as Miss Potts and Mr Giles joined them, clearly throwing caution to the wind once again with their presence. There was a strange edge in the room that Darrell couldn’t quite understand and - for now - she didn’t have the energy to try to.

“So”, Mr Giles cleared his throat, “it’s good to see you back up and about”. Darrell offered him a smile, taking pity on his awkward attempt at breaking the silence.

She saw Alicia reach out and pick up one of the pots of medication in her bag and read it, “I thought this was the medicine that doctor your parents sent down prescribed”, Alicia frowned as she spoke, “I thought that…”

“I still see things”, Darrell cut her off and her statement left the chilling silence she knew it would.

“But… We…”, Alicia started and then ran out of whatever she wanted to say. Darrell couldn’t blame her, she had thought as well that with the Conduit out of her head, that everything might start to go back to how it was before. They had taken her off her medication for her surgery and it was only two days later that she began to hallucinate again.

“It’s gone, the Conduit”, Darrell said, “I haven't heard his voice once since that night in the cottage and...there used to be this weight there that I knew was him. But I still see things that aren't real, hear things that aren't there. That’s why Felicity and I are leaving early for the Christmas hols so I can get more help, then we'll decide what happens next”. She felt Sally’s hand take hers in a tight grip that betrayed her friend’s emotions and she squeezed back.

“I thought killing the Conduit would make everything right”, Alicia voiced what everyone else must have been thinking.

“Even with him gone, I still went through what I went through and of course that would affect me somehow”, Darrell said. 

“But it doesn't seem fair”, Alicia swallowed a wobble of emotion in her voice. 

“That's because it isn't. Life isn’t”, Darrell , “it would be nice if life were that simple. But the good guys aren’t always stalwart and true, and bad guys don’t all have glowing red eyes and horns. Good doesn’t always win and even when it does, it doesn’t mean we all get to live happily ever after”. She sounded far more at ease with all of this than she actually felt and she was quite proud of the mask she had put on to stop herself breaking down and crying.

Alicia looked as though she were going to cry herself and Darrell could practically feel Sally’s hand trembling in hers. Mr Giles and Miss Potts shared a look that Darrell couldn’t quite read.

“When will you know if you’ll be coming back?”, Sally’s voice was quiet and hollow.

“Maybe by the New Year?”, Darrell shrugged, “Miss Grayling has told me that I’m welcome back when I feel ready, that she will handle the...the concerns of students and their families about me, but it all depends on how the next few weeks go. I won’t be back for the beginning of term”.

The knock at the door made them all jump and Felicity’s head appeared from behind the door as it opened. Darrell saw the bewildered look Felicity shot in Mr Giles’ direction, which of course made sense because from Felicity’s perspective the groundskeeper was checking in on Darrell which was quite ridiculous. Thankfully her sister shrugged it off and just said,

“They’re here”. 

Darrell nodded and Miss Potts finished putting the last of Darrell’s items in her bag for her. 

“I’ll take it”, Sally said. Alicia managed to fumble through a goodbye before just giving up on finding the right words and hugging Darrell. Miss Potts wished her well and nodded to both her and Felicity as Darrell picked up the stick the hospital had given her to help her walk and followed Felicity out.

They walked down the stairs in silence, down through to the main hall and out to the carpark where Darrell’s parents were waiting. Sombre hellos were exchanged before her father took her bag from Sally and said they would be waiting in the car. 

“I wish I could fix all of this for you”, Sally said eventually. Darrell took her hand and tugged Sally in to hug her, 

“I think I already owe you quite enough”, Darrell said, though she wasn’t sure if she would ever remember what had happened that night. Sally looked a little uncomfortable as she stepped back, she never was one for overt displays of affection,

“Can I still…”, Sally must have realised that Darrell was still holding her hand because she went to let go, then blushed as Darrell wouldn't let her by holding her hand a little tighter, “people might be watching”. 

“Good for them”, Darrell grinned and Sally shook her head with a laugh. 

“Will I be allowed to see you over the hols?”, Sally asked. 

“I'll be at home most of the time, there's only a few days I need to be in hospital”, Darrell replied, “get permission to call me later this week I'll tell you when. If your parents will let you visit me, you can”. 

“If they don't, I'll do it anyway”, Sally replied and she squeezed Darrell’s hand one more time before finally letting it go. 

 

_ End _

  
  
  
  



End file.
